We show that every forward complete Finsler manifold of infinite fundamental group and not homotopy-equivalent to $S^1$ has infinitely many geometrically distinct geodesics joining any given pair of points $p$ and $q$. In the special case in which $β_1(M;\mathbb{Z})\geq 1$ and $M$ is closed, the number of geometrically distinct geodesics between two points grows at least logarithmically.
In this paper, we study the existence and multiplicity problems for orthogonal Finsler geodesic chords in a manifold with boundary which is homeomorphic to a N-dimensional disk. Under a suitable assumption, which is weaker than convexity, we prove that, if the Finsler metric is reversible, then there are at least N orthogonal Finsler geodesic chords that are geometrically distinct. If the reversibility assumption does not hold, then there are at least two orthogonal Finsler geodesic chords with different values of the energy functional.
The study of solutions with fixed energy of certain classes of Lagrangian (or Hamiltonian) systems is reduced, via the classical Maupertuis--Jacobi variational principle, to the study of geodesics in Riemannian manifolds. We are interested in investigating the problem of existence of brake orbits and homoclinic orbits, in which case the Maupertuis--Jacobi principle produces a Riemannian manifold with boundary and with metric degenerating in a non trivial way on the boundary. In this paper we use the classical Maupertuis--Jacobi principle to show how to remove the degeneration of the metric on …
In this paper we give a proof of the existence of an orthogonal geodesic chord on a Riemannian manifold homeomorphic to a closed disk and with concave boundary. This kind of study is motivated by the link of the multiplicity problem with the famous Seifert conjecture (formulated in 1948) about multiple brake orbits for a class of Hamiltonian systems at a fixed energy level.
We introduce a new geometric flow called the chord shortening flow which is the negative gradient flow for the length functional on the space of chords with end points lying on a fixed submanifold in Euclidean space. As an application, we give a simplified proof of a classical theorem of Lusternik and Schnirelmann (and a generalization by Riede and Hayashi) on the existence of multiple orthogonal geodesic chords. For a compact convex planar domain, we show that any convex chord which is not orthogonal to the boundary would shrink to a point in finite time under the flow.
We give lower bounds for the growth of the number of Reeb chords and for the volume growth of Reeb flows on spherizations over closed manifolds M that are not of finite type, have virtually polycyclic fundamental group, and satisfy a mild assumption on the homology of the based loop space. For the special case of geodesic flows, these lower bounds are: (i) For any Riemannian metric on M, any pair of non-conjugate points p,q in M, and every component C of the space of paths from p to q, the number of geodesics in C of length at most T grows at least like e^{\sqrt T}. (ii) The exponent of the vo…
We prove that a reversible Berwaldian Finsler structure $\left(M,F\right)$ with base-independent non-negative radial flag curvature and large volume growth does not have any closed geodesics.
The purpose of this note is to provide some volume estimates for Einstein warped products similar to a classical result due to Calabi and Yau for complete Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature. To do so, we make use of the approach of quasi-Einstein manifolds which is directly related to Einstein warped product. In particular, we present an obstruction for the existence of such a class of manifolds.
The existence of two geometrically distinct closed geodesics on an $n$-dimensional sphere $S^n$ with a non-reversible and bumpy Finsler metric was shown independently by Duan--Long [7] and the author [27]. We simplify the proof of this statement by the following observation: If for some $N \in \mathbb{N}$ all closed geodesics of index $\le N$ of a non-reversible and bumpy Finsler metric on $S^n$ are geometrically equivalent to the closed geodesic $c$ then there is a covering $c^r$ of minimal index growth, i.e. $${\rm ind}(c^{rm})=m {\rm ind}(c^r)-(m-1)(n-1)$$ for all $m \ge 1$ with ${\rm ind}\…
We prove exponential growth rate of contractible closed geodesics for an arbitrary bumpy metric on manifolds of the form X#Y, where the fundamental group of X has a subgroup of finite index at least 3 and Y is simply connected and not a homotopy sphere.
Let (M,g) be a compact Riemannian manifold of hyperbolic type, i.e M is a manifold admitting another metric of strictly negative curvature. In this paper we study the geodesic flow restricted to the set of geodesics which are minimal on the universal covering. In particular for surfaces we show that the topological entropy of the minimal geodesics coincides with the volume entropy of (M, g) generalizing work of Freire and Mane.
Let $d$ be a positive square-free integer $\equiv 3 \pmod{4}$ such that there is no invariant of the ideal class group $\mathbb{Q}\lbrack \sqrt{-d}\rbrack$ which is divisible by $4$. We prove an asymptotic formula for the number of immersed totally geodesic surfaces in $Γ_{-d}\backslash \mathbb{H}^3$ having area less than $X$.
Let $Γ$ be a (non-elementary) convex co-compact group of isometries of a pinched Hadamard manifold $X$. We show that a normal subgroup $Γ_0$ has critical exponent equal to the critical exponent of $Γ$ if and only if $Γ/ Γ_0$ is amenable. We prove a similar result for the exponential growth rate of closed geodesics on $X / Γ$. These statements are analogues of classical results of Kesten for random walks on groups and of Brooks for the spectrum of the Laplacian on covers of Riemannian manifolds.
A Riemannian manifold is said to be uniformly secure if there is a finite number $s$ such that all geodesics connecting an arbitrary pair of points in the manifold can be blocked by $s$ point obstacles. We prove that the number of geodesics with length $\leq T$ between every pair of points in a uniformly secure manifold grows polynomially as $T \to \infty$. We derive from this that a compact Riemannian manifold with no conjugate points whose geodesic flow has positive topological entropy is totally insecure: the geodesics between any pair of points cannot be blocked by a finite number of point…
In the recent paper \cite{LoD1}, we classified closed geodesics on Finsler manifolds into rational and irrational two families, and gave a complete understanding on the index growth properties of iterates of rational closed geodesics. This study yields that a rational closed geodesic can not be the only closed geodesic on every irreversible or reversible (including Riemannian) Finsler sphere, and that there exist at least two distinct closed geodesics on every compact simply connected irreversible or reversible (including Riemannian) Finsler 3-dimensional manifold. In this paper, we study the …
We prove a so called $κ$ non-inflating property for Ricci flow, which provides an upper bound for volume ratio of geodesic balls over Euclidean ones, under an upper bound for scalar curvature. This result can be regarded as the opposite statement of Perelman's $κ$ non-collapsing property for Ricci flow. These two results together imply volume doubling property for Ricci flow without assuming Ricci curvature lower bound.
The aim of this paper is to state and prove polynomial analogues of the classical Manning inequality relating the topological entropy of a geodesic flow with the growth rate of the volume of balls in the universal covering. To this aim we use two numerical conjugacy invariants, the {\em strong polynomial entropy $h_{pol}$} and the {\em weak polynomial entropy $h_{pol}^*$}. Both are infinite when the topological entropy is positive and they satisfy $h_{pol}^*\leq h_{pol}$. We first prove that the growth rate of the volume of balls is bounded above by means of the strong polynomial entropy and w…
We study symmetries of specific left--invariant sub--Riemannian structure with filtration $(4,7)$ and their impact on sub--Riemannian geodesics of corresponding control problem. We show that there are two very different types of geodesics, they either do not intersect the fixed point set of symmetries or are contained in this set for all times. We use the symmetry reduction to study properties of geodesics.
Growth of Simple Closed Geodesics in Finite-Volume Hyperbolic Manifolds
Fudan University(复旦大学);Shanghai Institute for Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences (SIMIS)(上海数学与交叉学科研究院);Research Institute of Intelligent Complex Systems, Fudan University(复旦大学复杂系统智能研究院)
In this article, we consider the geodesic flow on a compact rank $1$ Riemannian manifold $M$ without focal points, whose universal cover is denoted by $X$. On the ideal boundary $X(\infty)$ of $X$, we show the existence and uniqueness of the Busemann density, which is realized via the Patterson-Sullivan measure. Based on the the Patterson-Sullivan measure, we show that the geodesic flow on $M$ has a unique invariant measure of maximal entropy. We also obtain the asymptotic growth rate of the volume of geodesic spheres in $X$ and the growth rate of the number of closed geodesics on $M$. These r…
In this article, we provide some volume growth estimates for complete noncompact gradient Ricci solitons and quasi-Einstein manifolds similar to the classical results by Bishop, Calabi and Yau for complete Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature. We prove a sharp volume growth estimate for complete noncompact gradient shrinking Ricci soliton. Moreover, we provide upper bound volume growth estimates for complete noncompact quasi-Einstein manifolds with $λ=0.$ In addition, we prove that geodesic balls of complete noncompact quasi-Einstein manifolds with $λ<0$ and $μ\leq 0$ have at …
This paper constructs a class of complete Kähler metrics of positive holomorphic sectional curvature on ${\bf C}^n$ and finds that the constructed metrics satisfy the following properties: As the geodesic distance $ρ\to\infty,$ the volume of geodesic balls grows like $O(ρ^{\frac{2(β+1)n}{β+2}})$ and the Riemannian scalar curvature decays like $O(ρ^{-\frac{2(β+1)}{β+2}}),$ where $β\geq 0.$
We consider the free nilpotent Lie algebra $L$ with 2 generators, of step 4, and the corresponding connected simply connected Lie group $G$. We study the left-invariant sub-Riemannian structure on $G$ defined by the generators of $L$ as an orthonormal frame. We compute two vector field models of $L$ by polynomial vector fields in $R^8$, and find an infinitesimal symmetry of the sub-Riemannian structure. Further, we compute explicitly the product rule in $G$, the right-invariant frame on $G$, linear on fibers Hamiltonians corresponding to the left-invariant and right-invariant frames on $G$, Ca…
We show that, on a complete and possibly non-compact Riemannian manifold of dimension at least 2 without close conjugate points at infinity, the existence of a closed geodesic with local homology in maximal degree and maximal index growth under iteration forces the existence of infinitely many closed geodesics. For closed manifolds, this was a theorem due to Hingston.
We define a norm on homology of punctured tori equipped with a complete hyperbolic metric of finite volume and use it to find asymptotics on the growth of the number of simple geodesics of bounded length.
Let $X$ be a Hadamard manifold with pinched negative curvature $-b^2\leqκ\leq -1$. Suppose $Σ\subseteq X$ is a totally geodesic, codimension-1 submanifold and consider the geodesic flow $Φ^ν_t$ on $X$ generated by a unit normal vector field $ν$ on $Σ$. We say the normal growth exponent of $Σ$ in $X$ is at most $β$ if \[ \lim_{t \rightarrow \pm \infty} \frac{ \Vert d Φ_t^ν\Vert_{\infty} }{ e^{β\vert t \vert}} < \infty, \] where $\Vert d Φ_t^ν\Vert_{\infty} $ is the supremum of the operator norm of $d Φ_t^ν$ over all points of $Σ$. We show that if $Σ$ is bi-Lipschitz to hyperbolic $n$-space $\ma…
On a surface with a Finsler metric, we investigate the asymptotic growth of the number of closed geodesics of length less than $L$ which minimize length among all geodesic multicurves in the same homology class. An important class of surfaces which are of interest to us are hyperbolic surfaces.
It has been suggested in 1999 that a certain volume growth condition for geodesically complete Riemannian manifolds might imply that the manifold is stochastically complete. This is motivated by a large class of examples and by a known analogous criterion for recurrence of Brownian motion. We show that the suggested implication is not true in general. We also give counter-examples to a converse implication.
In this paper we study the systole function along Weil-Petersson geodesics. We show that the square root of the systole function is uniformly Lipschitz on Teichmüller space endowed with the Weil-Petersson metric. As an application, we study the growth of the Weil-Petersson inradius of moduli space of Riemann surfaces of genus $g$ with $n$ punctures as a function of $g$ and $n$. We show that the Weil-Petersson inradius is comparable to $\sqrt{\ln{g}}$ with respect to $g$, and is comparable to $1$ with respect to $n$. Moreover, we also study the asymptotic behavior, as $g$ goes to infinity, of t…
For a pair of points $x,y$ in a compact, riemannian manifold $M$ let $n_t(x,y)$ (resp. $s_t(x,y)$) be the number of geodesic segments with length $\leq t$ joining these points (resp. the minimal number of point obstacles needed to block them). We study relationships between the growth rates of $n_t(x,y)$ and $s_t(x,y)$ as $t\to\infty$. We derive lower bounds on $s_t(x,y)$ in terms of the topological entropy $h(M)$ and its fundamental group. This strengthens the results of Burns-Gutkin \cite{BG06} and Lafont-Schmidt \cite{LS}. For instance, by \cite{BG06,LS}, $h(M)>0$ implies that $s$ is unboun…