Periodic trajectories on Lorentz manifolds under the action of a vector field (Q1586121)

Let \((M_0,h)\) be a connected Riemannian manifold and let \(M=M_0\times\mathbb{R}\). If there exists a positive function \(\beta : M_0\to\mathbb{R}\), then, for any \(X=(X_0,t_1)\), \(Y =(Y_0,t_2)\in T_zM\) at \(z=(x,t)\in M\), a function \(h_{\text{L}}\) defined by \(h_{\text{L}}(X,Y)=h(X_0, Y_0)-\beta(x)t_1t_2\) is a static Lorentz metric on \(M\) and \((M,h_{\text{L}})\) is a static Lorentz manifold. Let \(\mathcal A : M\to TM\) be a smooth vector field independent of the time, i.e., \(\mathcal A(z)=\mathcal A(x)\). This paper is concerned with the existence of geodesics, called \(T\)-periodic trajectories, for static Lorentzian manifolds, that is, for a positive real number \(T\), one finds a curve \(\gamma=(x,t): [0,1]\to M\) satisfying the following conditions: \[ \begin{gathered} D_s\dot\gamma=\tfrac 12[(\nabla^{\text{L}}\mathcal A (\gamma))^{\text{T}}-\nabla^{\text{L}}\mathcal A(\gamma)] \dot\gamma,\\ x(0)=x(1),\;\;\dot x(0)=\dot x(1)\\ t(0)=0,\;\;t(1)=T,\;\;\dot t(0)=\dot t(1), \end{gathered} \] where \(D_s\dot\gamma\) is the covariant derivative of \(\dot\gamma\) along \(\gamma\) with respect to the metric \(h_{\text{L}}\), \(\nabla^{\text{L}}\mathcal A\) is the Lorentzian gradient of \(A\), and \((\nabla^{\text{L}}\mathcal A)^{\text{T}}\) is the transpose matrix of \(\nabla^{\text{L}}\mathcal A\). This problem represents the Lorentz world-force law which determines the trajectories of relativistic particles submitted to an electromagnetic field. The trajectories joining \(z_0\) and \(z_1\) are the critical points of the functional \[ f(z)=\int^1_0 h_{\text{L}}(\dot z,\dot z) ds+ \int^1_0 h_{\text{L}}(A(z),\dot z) ds \] defined on a manifold of curves on \(M\). The functional \(f\) is strongly indefinite and this makes the search for its critical points difficult. This problem is overcome by using a variational principle which reduces the search for the critical points of \(f\) to that for the critical points of a corresponding Riemannian functional \(J\) on \(M_0\). In this paper, the authors prove that on a static Lorentz manifold \(M_0\times\mathbb{R}\), where \(M_0\) is non-contractible in itself and \(\pi(M_{0})\) is finite or contains infinitely many conjugacy classes, under suitable assumptions on the coefficients of the metric \(h_{\text{L}}\) and on \(\mathcal A\), for any positive integer \(m\) there exist at least \(m\) distinct \(T\)-periodic trajectories.