Some properties of the spectral flow in semi-Riemannian geometry (Q1299178)

The authors study geodesics joining two points of a semi-Riemannian manifold \(M\) and study the derivative of the spectral flow for simple eigenvalues. They apply their results in the Riemannian setting to show that the spectral flow is strictly decreasing and give a proof of the Morse index theorem on the number of conjugate points along a geodesic. They also show that in semi-Riemannian geometry, the analoguous Morse index theorem cannot exist in the same form. They also apply their results to study the standard static Lorentzian \(2\)-manifold \(M=M_0\times \mathbb{R}\) where the metric takes the form \(ds^2=dx^2-\beta(x)dt^2\) (\(M_0=\mathbb{R}\) or \(M_0=S^1\)) where \(0<\beta(x)\leq N\) and \(M\) is complete. They show that (1) every spacelike geodesic does not have conjugate points, (2) if two points are causally related, then there are no spacelike geodesics joining them, (3) if two points are not causally related, then there is exactly one geodesic joining them and that geodesic is spacelike.