Finsler geodesics, periodic Reeb orbits, and open books (Q1695709)

The authors survey some results on the Weinstein conjecture for contact geometry. The Weinstein conjecture concerns the existence of periodic orbits for the Reeb vector field of a contact form. They place these results in the context of Finsler geometry by proving that the Finsler geodesic flow can be interpreted as a Reeb flow on a certain contact manifold included in the tangent bundle of a Finsler manifold. Then they show that such an interpretation is made more natural by doing a Legendre transformation and working on the cotangent bundle. The following sections of this survey deal with the Weinstein conjecture both in the compact and in non-compact case. The last section contains some original result that extend known existence statements on the existence of periodic Reeb orbits on a contact manifold with suitable supporting open books.