Riemannian tori without conjugate points are flat (Q1329576): Difference between revisions

The authors prove a well known conjecture contributed to E. Hopf that every Riemannian metric without conjugate points on the \(n\)-torus \(T^ n\) is flat. The beautiful proof is completely elementary and quite simple: Such a metric on \(T^ n\) induces a \(\mathbb{Z}^ n\)-equivariant distance function \(\widetilde {d}\) on \(\mathbb{R}^ n\), and to this distance function is associated a norm \(\| \|\) on \(\mathbb{R}^ n\) such that \(| \| x - y \| - \widetilde {d}(x, y)| \leq \text{const}\) for all \(x, y \in \mathbb{R}^ n\). Using Busemann functions associated to rational directions and integral inequalities derived with the help of the Birkhoff ergodic theorem they show that the unit sphere of \(\| \|\) is in fact an ellipsoid and hence \(\| \|\) is euclidean. From this the theorem easily follows.