Marked boundary rigidity for surfaces of Anosov type (Q6201406)

A Riemannian metric \(g\) on a smooth, compact, connected, oriented manifold with non-empty boundary \(\Sigma\) is said to be of \emph{Anosov type} if the boundary is strictly convex (that is, the second fundamental form is positive definite), the metric has no conjugate points and the set of geodesics trapped in it for infinite time is hyperbolic. The \emph{marked boundary distance function} is defined as the length of the unique \(g\)-geodesic representative in the homotopy class of a curve connecting two boundary points. It is natural to expect that this function should characterize, up to isometry, the metric in the class of Anosov type metrics, similarly to the Burns-Katok marked length spectrum conjecture [\textit{K. Burns} and \textit{A. Katok}, Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 5, 307--317 (1985; Zbl 0572.58019)]. The main result of the paper under review is that this is indeed the case, at least for surfaces. More precisely, the authors show that if two Riemannian metrics \(g_1\) and \(g_2\) of Anosov type have the same marked boundary distance function on a smooth compact, connected oriented surface with boundary, then there exists a smooth diffeomorphism \(\phi\), which is the identity on the boundary, such that \(g_1 = \phi^* g_2\); moreover, such diffeomorphism is isotopic to the identity through a path of diffeomorphisms that fix (pointwise) the boundary. The main tool to obtain the above result is a so-called \emph{transfer principle}, which allows to translate the rigidity problem for the boundary length function on surfaces with boundary to the rigidity of the marked length function on \emph{closed} Anosov manifolds, provided one can isometrically embed the manifold with boundary inside a closed one. Let us comment a bit more on the strategy. A Riemannian metric of Anosov type on a smooth, compact, connected, oriented manifold with boundary \(\Sigma\) is said to be \emph{extendable}, if there exists a smooth \emph{closed}, connected, oriented, Anosov manifold \((M,g')\) (of the same dimension of \(\Sigma\)), and an isometric embedding \(\iota\colon (\Sigma,g) \to (M,g')\). Moreover, two metrics of Anosov type \(g_1\) and \(g_2\) are consistently extendable if they are both extendable to the same manifold \(M\) and their extensions agree on the complement of \(\Sigma\) in \(M\). The transfer principle asserts that, if two metrics of Anosov type are consistently extendable and have the same marked boundary distance function, then they are isometric, provided the marked length spectrum rigidity holds for the closed manifold they are extended to. Then, the main results follows from the transfer principle, the injectivity of the marked length spectrum for Anosov surfaces [\textit{C. Guillarmou} et al., ``Marked length spectrum rigidity for Anosov surfaces'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2303.12007}] and the fact that metrics of Anosov type are extendable [\textit{D. Chen} et al., J. Éc. Polytech., Math. 10, 945--987 (2023; Zbl 07690443)].