On the Berger conjecture for manifolds all of whose geodesics are closed (Q1689501): Difference between revisions

A Besse manifold is defined as a Riemannian manifold all of whose geodesics are closed. A conjecture of Berger states that on a simply connected Besse manifold, all prime geodesics have the same length. So far this conjecture has been proved for 2-spheres by \textit{D. Gromoll} and \textit{K. Grove} [Invent. Math. 65, 175--177 (1981; Zbl 0477.53044)] and partially in the three-dimensional case by \textit{J. Olsen} [Ann. Global Anal. Geom. 37, No. 2, 173--184 (2010; Zbl 1188.53039)]. The main goal of the paper is to show that it is true also for all spheres of dimension at least four (Theorem A). To prove this result the authors first consider the energy function on a free loop space and show the following: Theorem D. Let \(M\) be a simply connected Besse manifold. Then the energy functional is a perfect Morse-Bott function for the rational, \(S^1\)-equivariant cohomology of the pair \((\Lambda M,M)\).