Short geodesics are important in the study of the geometry and the spectra of Riemann surfaces. Bers' theorem gives a global bound on the length of the first $3g-3$ geodesics. We use the construction of Brooks and Makover of random Riemann surfaces to investigate the distribution of short ($< \log (g)$) geodesics on a random Riemann surfaces. We calculate the expected value of the shortest geodesic, and show that if one orders prime non-intersecting geodesics by length $γ_1\le γ_2\le ... \le γ_i ,...$, then for fixed $k$, if one allows the genus to go to infinity, the length of $γ_{k}$ is independent of the genus.
For a Riemannian submersion from a simple compact Lie group with a bi-invariant metric, we prove the action of its holonomy group on the fibers is transitive. As a step towards classifying Riemannian submersions with totally geodesic fibers, we consider the parameterized surface induced by lifting a base geodesic to points along a geodesic in a fiber. Such a surface is "doubly ruled" (it is ruled by horizontal geodesics and also by vertical geodesics). Its characterizing properties allow us to define "doubly ruled parameterized surfaces" in any Riemannian manifold, independent of Riemannian su…
Let x and y be two (not necessarily distinct) points on a closed Riemannian manifold M of dimension n. According to a celebrated theorem by J.P. Serre there exist infinitely many geodesics between x and y. The length of the shortest of these geodesics is obviously less than the diameter of M. But what can be said about the length of the other geodesics? We conjecture that for every k there are k geodesics between x and y of length not exceeding kd, where d denotes the diameter of M.This conjecture is obviously true for round spheres and it is not difficult to prove it for all closed Riemannian…
This note proves that any locally extremal non-self-conjugate geodesic loop in a Riemannian manifold is a closed geodesic. As a consequence, any complete and non-contractible Riemannian manifold with diverging injectivity radii along diverging sequences and without points conjugate to themselves, possesses a minimizing closed geodesic.
In this paper we study geodesics of left-invariant sub-Riemannian metrics on SO(3) and almost-Riemannian metrics on $S^2$. These structures are connected with each other, and it is possible to use information about one of them to obtain results about another one. We give an explicit parameterization of sub-Riemannian geodesics on SO(3) and use it to get a parameterization of almost-Riemannian geodesics on $S^2$. We use symmetries of the exponential map to obtain some necessary optimality conditions. We present some upper bounds on the cut time in both cases and describe periodic geodesics on S…
We introduce the notion of spectral flow along a periodic semi-Riemannian geodesic, as a suitable substitute of the Morse index in the Riemannian case. We study the growth of the spectral flow along a closed geodesic under iteration, determining its asymptotic behavior.
We consider a closed three-dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifold. The objective of this note is to provide a precise description of the sub-Riemannian geodesics with large initial momenta: we prove that they "spiral around the Reeb orbits", not only in the phase space but also in the configuration space. Our analysis is based on a normal form along any Reeb orbit due to Melrose.
A geodesic orbit manifold is a complete Riemannian manifold all of whose geodesics are orbits of one-parameter groups of isometries. We give both a geometric and an algebraic characterization of geodesic orbit manifolds that are diffeomorphic to $\mathbf{R}^n$. Along the way, we establish various structural properties of more general geodesic orbit manifolds.
We prove the existence of Alexandrov embedded closed magnetic geodesics on closed hyperbolic surfaces. Closed magnetic geodesics correspond to closed curves with prescribed geodesic curvature.
We prove the existence of immersed closed curves of constant geodesic curvature in an arbitrary Riemannian 2-sphere for almost every prescribed curvature. To achieve this, we develop a min-max scheme for a weighted length functional.
Fix a smooth closed manifold $M$. Let $R_M$ denote the space of all pairs $(g,L)$ such that $g$ is a $C^3$ Riemannian metric on $M$ and the real number $L$ is not the length of any closed $g$-geodesics. A locally constant geodesic count function $π_M:R_M\rightarrow Z$ is constructed. For this purpose, the weight of compact open subsets of the space of closed $g$-geodesics is defined and investigated for an arbitrary Riemannian metric $g$.
We consider a pseudo-Riemannian metric that changes signature along a smooth curve on a surface, called the discriminant curve. The discriminant curve separates the surface locally into a Riemannian and a Lorentzian domain. We study the local behaviour and properties of geodesics at a point on the discriminant where the isotropic direction is tangent to the discriminant curve.
Metrics on Lie groupoids and differentiable stacks have been introduced recently, extending the Riemannian geometry of manifolds and orbifolds to more general singular spaces. Here we continue that theory, studying stacky curves on Riemannian stacks, measuring their length using stacky metrics, and introducing stacky geodesics. Our main results show that the length of stacky curves measure distances on the orbit space, characterize stacky geodesics as locally minimizing curves, and establish a stacky version of Hopf-Rinow Theorem. We include a concise overview that bypasses nonessential techni…
In this paper we survey on some recent results on Riemannian orbifolds and singular Riemannian foliations and combine them to conclude the existence of closed geodesics in the leaf space of some classes of singular Riemannian foliations (s.r.f.), namely s.r.f. that admit sections or have no horizontal conjugate points. We also investigate the shortening process with respect to Riemannian foliations.
We calculate the local Riemann-Roch numbers of the zero sections of $T^*S^n$ and $T^*\R P^n$, where the local Riemann-Roch numbers are defined by using the $S^1$-bundle structure on their complements associated to the geodesic flows.
In this paper we consider some properties of the three-dimensional homogeneous SO(2)-isotropic Riemannian manifolds. In particular, we determine the geodesics, the totally geodesic surfaces, the totally umbilical surfaces and the geodesics of the rotational surfaces.
We classify hypersurfaces of the Minkowski space $Ł^{n+1}$ that carry a totally geodesic foliation with complete leaves of codimension one. We prove that such a hypersurface is ruled, or a partial tube over a curve or contains a two or three dimensional strip. Moreover, if the hypersurface is embedded then it is a partial tube over a curve.
Let $M$ be a Riemannian $2$-sphere. A classical theorem of Lyusternik and Shnirelman asserts the existence of three distinct simple non-trivial periodic geodesics on $M$. In this paper we prove that there exist three simple periodic geodesics with lengths that do not exceed $20d$, where $d$ is the diameter of $M$. We also present an upper bound that depends only on the area and diameter for the lengths of the three simple periodic geodesics with positive indices that appear as minimax critical values in the classical proofs of the Lyusternik-Shnirelman theorem. Finally, we present better bound…
We enumerate a necessary condition for the existence of infinitely many geometrically distinct, non-constant, prime closed geodesics on an arbitrary closed Riemannian manifold $M$. That is, we show that any Riemannian metric on $M$ admits infinitely many prime closed geodesics such that the energy functional $E:ΛM\to\mathbb{R}$ has infinitely many non-degenerate critical points on the free loop space $ΛM$ of Sobolev class $H^1=W^{1,2}$. This result is obtained by invoking a handle decomposition of free loop space and using methods of cellular homology to study its topological invariants.
We describe all pseudo-Riemannian metrics on closed surfaces whose geodesic flows admit nontrivial integrals quadratic in momenta. As an application, we solve the Beltrami problem on closed surfaces, prove the nonexistence of quadratically-superintegrable metrics of nonconstant curvature on closed surfaces, and prove the two-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian version of the projective Obata conjecture.
A celebrated result due to Poincaré affirms that a closed non-degenerate minimizing geodesic $γ$ on an oriented Riemannian surface is hyperbolic. Starting from this classical theorem, our first main result is a general instability criterion for timelike and spacelike closed semi-Riemannian geodesics on a (non)oriented manifold. A key role is played by the spectral index, a new topological invariant that we define through the spectral flow (being the Morse index truly infinite) of a path of selfadjoint Fredholm operators. A major step in the proof of this result is a em new spectral flow formul…
We construct examples of compact and one-ended constant mean curvature surfaces with large mean curvature in Riemannian manifolds with axial symmetry by gluing together small spheres positioned end-to-end along a geodesic. Such surfaces cannot exist in Euclidean space, but we show that the gradient of the ambient scalar curvature acts as a `friction term' which permits the usual analytic gluing construction to be carried out.
We determine the lengths of all closed sub-Riemannian geodesics on the three-sphere. Our methods are elementary and allow us to avoid using explicit formulas for the sub-Riemannian geodesics.
To any compact Riemann surface of genus g one may assign a principally polarized abelian variety of dimension g, the Jacobian of the Riemann surface. The Jacobian is a complex torus, and a Gram matrix of the lattice of a Jacobian is called a period Gram matrix. This paper provides upper and lower bounds for all the entries of the period Gram matrix with respect to a suitable homology basis. These bounds depend on the geometry of the cut locus of non-separating simple closed geodesics. Assuming that the cut loci can be calculated, a theoretical approach is presented followed by an example where…
We extend the Besicovitch-Federer projection theorem to transversal families of mappings. As an application we show that on a certain class of Riemann surfaces with constant negative curvature and with boundary, there exist natural 2-dimensional measures invariant under the geodesic flow having 2-dimensional supports such that their projections to the base manifold are 2-dimensional but the supports of the projections are Lebesgue negligible. In particular, the union of complete geodesics has Hausdorff dimension 2 and is Lebesgue negligible.
We describe all pseudo-Riemannian metrics on closed surfaces whose geodesic flows admit nontrivial integrals quadratic in momenta. As an application, we solve the Beltrami problem on closed surfaces and prove the nonexistence of quadratically-superintegrable metrics of nonconstant curvature on closed surfaces
We study the energy distribution of harmonic 1-forms on a compact hyperbolic Riemann surface $S$ where a short closed geodesic is pinched. If the geodesic separates the surface into two parts, then the Jacobian torus of $S$ develops into a torus that splits. If the geodesic is nonseparating then the Jacobian torus of $S$ degenerates. The aim of this work is to get insight into this process and give estimates in terms of geometric data of both the initial surface $S$ and the final surface, such as its injectivity radius and the lengths of geodesics that form a homology basis. As an invariant we…
It is well-known that hyperbolic flows admit Markov partitions of arbitrarily small size. However, the constructions of Markov partitions for general hyperbolic flows are very abstract and not easy to understand. To establish a more detailed understanding of Markov partitions, in this paper we consider the geodesic flow on Riemann surfaces of constant negative curvature. We provide a rigorous construction of Markov partitions for this hyperbolic flow with explicit forms of rectangles and local cross sections. The local product structure is also calculated in detail.
We prove Wadsley's theorem for foliations by closed non-lightlike geodesics. As an application we show that every pseudo-Riemannian and non-Riemannian 2-mainfold, all of whose time- or spacelike geodesics are closed, is diffeomorphic to $S^1\times \R$. Further we show that every pseudo-Riemannian 2-manifold with index 1 contains a non-closed timelike or spacelike geodesic.
We study the geodesic X-ray transform $X$ on compact Riemannian surfaces with conjugate points. Regardless of the type of the conjugate points, we show that we cannot recover the singularities and therefore, this transform is always unstable (ill-posed). We describe the microlocal kernel of $X$ and relate it to the conjugate locus. We present numerical examples illustrating the cancellation of singularities. We also show that the attenuated X-ray transform is well posed if the attenuation is positive and there are no more than two conjugate points along each geodesic; but still ill-posed, if t…
Given a compact manifold with boundary with unknown Riemannian metric. The problem is to reconstruct the metric in a class of conformal metrics from knowledge of lengths of all closed geodesics (kinematic data). An integral inequality is stated which implies uniqueness and stability for this problem. If the conformal class is not known a unique reconstruction is not possible since of shortage of information. It is proved that the list of all geodesic lengths is sufficient for unique determination of a Riemannian metric in a compact surface with boundary up to an automorphism which fix the boun…
We study the sub-Riemannian exponential for contact distributions on manifolds of dimension greater or equal to 5. We compute an approximation of the sub-Riemannian Hamiltonian flow and show that the conjugate time can have multiplicity 2 in this case. We obtain an approximation of the first conjugate locus for small radii and introduce a geometric invariant to show that the metric for contact distributions typically exhibits an original behavior, different from the classical 3-dimensional case. We apply these methods to the case of 5-dimensional contact manifolds. We provide a stability analy…
If all prime closed geodesics on $(S^n,F)$ with an irreversible Finsler metric $F$ are irrationally elliptic, there exist either exactly $2\left[\frac{n+1}{2}\right]$ or infinitely many distinct closed geodesics. As an application, we show the existence of three distinct closed geodesics on bumpy Finsler $(S^3,F)$ if any prime closed geodesic has non-zero Morse index.
This is supplementary material for the main Geodesics article by the authors. In Appendix A, we present some general results on the construction of Gaussian random fields. In Appendix B, we restate our Shape Theorem, specialized to the setting of this article. In Appendix C, we state some straightforward consequences on the geometry of geodesics for a random metric. In Appendix D, we provide a rapid introduction to Riemannian geometry for the unfamiliar reader. In Appendix E, we present some analytic estimates which we use in the article. In Appendix F, we present the construction of the condi…
We analyze the disordered Riemannian geometry resulting from random perturbations of the Euclidean metric. We focus on geodesics, the paths traced out by a particle traveling in this quenched random environment. By taking the point of the view of the particle, we show that the law of its observed environment is absolutely continuous with respect to the law of the random metric, and we provide an explicit form for its Radon-Nikodym derivative. We use this result to prove a "local Markov property" along an unbounded geodesic, demonstrating that it eventually encounters any type of geometric phen…
