Spectral flow, Maslov index and bifurcation of semi-Riemannian geodesics (Q1876569)

Let \((M,g)\) be a semi-Riemannian manifold and \(p\in M\); a point \(q\in M\) is conjugate to \(p\) if \(q\) is a critical value of the exponental map \(\exp _p\), i.e. if the linearized geodesic map \(d \exp _p\) is not injective at \(\exp _p^{-1}(q)\). The natural question arises: whether the noninjectivity at the linear level implies nonuniqueness of geodesics between two conjugate points. Given by the author in the definition of conjugate point along an extremal of quadratic functionals and allows to reformulate the nonuniqueness geodesic problem as follows: which conjugate points along a semi-Riemannian geodesic are bifurcation points? By a suitable choice of coordinates in the space of paths joining a fixed point \(p\) in \(M\) and a point variable along a given geodesic \(\gamma\) starting at \(p\), the geodesic bifurcation problem is reduced to a bifurcation problem for a smooth family of strongly indefinite functionals defined in a fixed Hilbert space. The path of Fredholm operators corresponding to the index form along the geodesic is studied. As result the assertion is proved, that its spectral flow coincides up to a sign, with well-known integer valued invariant of the geodesic, called the Maslov index. Under a certain nondegeneracy assumption, the Maslov index is computed as the sum of the signatures of all conjugate points along the geodesic. Thus nondegenerate conjugate points with nonvanishing signature are bifurcation points and are found in every segment of geodesics which contains a set of conjugate points that give a nonzero contribution to the Maslov index. In particular as corollary the authors obtain an extension of a classical result of Morse and Littauer, that the exponential map is never one-to-one on any neighborhood of a nondegenerate conjugate point.