Trajectories covering flows for branched coverings of the sphere and projective plane (Q1326886)

Anosov raised the question of whether there can exist a semi-infinite, continuous curve on a closed surface whose lift to the universal cover has an asymptotic direction, but diverges unboundedly from geodesics in the same direction. In the sixties, he studied this question on closed surfaces other than \(S^ 2\) and \(P^ 2\). The authors study the analogous question on \(S^ 2\) and \(P^ 2\), using the hyperbolic plane \(\overline {M}\) as branched universal cover. They construct singular flows on \(S^ 2\) and \(P^ 2\) whose lifts to \(\overline {M}\) contain a trajectory with infinite deviation from a geodesic in the same asymptotic direction. The singularities are required to be topological saddles with \(\nu \geq 1\) separatrices.