Bumpy metrics on spheres and minimal index growth (Q523337): Difference between revisions

This note deals with an index growth property that can be used to simplify the proof of the existence of two geometrically distinct closed geodesics on a sphere \(S^n\) of dimension \(n \geq 3\) with a bumpy and non-reversible Finsler metric, which was obtained independently by H. Duan and Y. Long [Multiple closed geodesics on bumpy Finsler spheres, J. Diff. Equ. 233 (2007), 221--240] and H.-B. Rademacher [The second closed geodesic on Finsler spheres of dimension \(n>2\), Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 362 (2010), 1413--1421]. The main result of the paper reads as follows: Proposition 1. Consider a bumpy and non-reversible Finsler metric on \(S^n\) and let \(N_1 \geq 5n\) be a number for which there is a prime closed geodesic \(c\) such that all closed geodesics \(d\) whose index satisfies \(\text{ind}(d) \leq N_1 + 2\) are geometrically equivalent to \(c\). Let \[ r:=\begin{cases} n, & \text{if } n \text{ is even},\\ (n+1)/2, & \text{if } n \text{ is odd} \end{cases} \] and \(m_1 := \max\{m \in \mathbb{N} : \text{ind}(c^{rm}) \leq N_1\}\). Then \(m_1 \geq 2\) and the closed geodesic \(c^r\) is of minimal index growth up to level \(m_1\), i.e., \[ \text{ind}(c^{rm}) = m\text{ ind}(c^r) - (m-1)(n-1), \] for all \(m \leq m_1\). The paper also contains a discussion on perturbations for \(L > 0\) of Katok metrics on \(S^{2n}\) to obtain non-reversible Finsler metrics with positive flag curvature carrying exactly \(2n\) geometrically distinct closed geodesics with length less than \(L\).