Finsler geodesics, periodic Reeb orbits, and open books (Q1695709): Difference between revisions

The authors survey some results on the Weinstein conjecture for contact geometry. The Weinstein conjecture concerns the existence of periodic orbits for the Reeb vector field of a contact form. They place these results in the context of Finsler geometry by proving that the Finsler geodesic flow can be interpreted as a Reeb flow on a certain contact manifold included in the tangent bundle of a Finsler manifold. Then they show that such an interpretation is made more natural by doing a Legendre transformation and working on the cotangent bundle. The following sections of this survey deal with the Weinstein conjecture both in the compact and in non-compact case. The last section contains some original result that extend known existence statements on the existence of periodic Reeb orbits on a contact manifold with suitable supporting open books.