Contributions to the study of Anosov geodesic flows in non-compact manifolds (Q2191143)

Let \(\left( M,g\right) \) be a complete Riemann manifold with curvature bounded below and without conjugate points. The authors are concerned with the curvature conditions which guarantee that the geodesic flow of \(\left( M,g\right) \) is of Anosov type. Let \(SM\) denote the unitary tangent bundle of \(\left( M,g\right) \). Then for every \(\theta=\left( p,v\right) \in SM\), \(\gamma_{\theta}\left( t\right) \) denotes the unique geodesic satisfying \(\gamma_{\theta}\left( 0\right) =p\) and \(\gamma_{\theta}^{\prime}\left( 0\right) =v\). Let \(V\left( t\right) \) be a non-zero vector field along \(\gamma_{\theta}\) which is orthogonal to \(\gamma_{\theta}\). Then \(k\left( V\left( t\right) \right) \) denotes the sectional curvature of the subspace spanned by \(\gamma_{\theta}^{\prime }\left( t\right) \) and \(V\left( t\right) \). The authors' main result (Theorem 1.1) states that if the geodesic flow of \(\left( M,g\right) \) is Anosov, then there are \(B>0\), \(t_{0}>0\), such that, for every \(\theta\in SM\) and every unit vector field \(V\left( t\right) \) along the geodesic \(\gamma_{\theta}\) which is orthogonal to \(\gamma_{\theta}\), the following inequality holds: \[ \frac{1}{t}\int_{0}^{t}K\left( V\left( r\right) \right) dr\leq-B \] if \(t>t_{0}\). In Theorem 1.2, the authors prove that the hypotheses of Theorem 1.1 are also sufficient for the geodesic flow of \(\left( M,g\right) \) to be Anosov when \(\dim\left( M\right) =2\). In conclusion, the authors present a new family of non-compact surfaces with the Anosov geodesic flow and give an example of a non-compact surface of negative curvature with non-Anosov geodesic flow. The foregoing theorems generalize some of the results of the paper by \textit{P. Eberlein} [J. Differ. Geom. 8, 437--463 (1973; Zbl 0285.58008)] for the case when \(\left( M,g\right) \) is compact (or compactly homogeneous).