On the existence of closed geodesics on noncompact Riemannian manifolds (Q1210420)

The main result of the paper assures the existence of a closed geodesic on a complete noncompact Riemannian manifold \(M\) provided that (i) for some integer \(q > 2\dim M\) and some field \(k\) the \(q\)-th homology group with coefficients in \(k\) of the free loop space of \(M\) does not vanish and (ii) the sectional curvature of \(M\) is asymptotically nonpositive.