Equivariant Morse theory and closed geodesics (Q2266494)

The new main idea of this paper is to use the equivariant Morse theory in the sense of Atiyah and Bott [\textit{R. Bott}, Bull. Am. Math. Soc., New Ser. 7, 331-358 (1982; Zbl 0505.58001), Lecture 4] to the closed geodesic problem. For this purpose the author develops the Morse theory on the homotopy quotient \(\Lambda (M)_{O(2)}\) of the space of closed curves \(\Lambda\) (M) on M with its natural O(2) action. The main result obtained with this method is that generically there are infinitely many closed geodesics on a simply connected closed Riemannian manifold which has the rational homotopy type of a rank 1 symmetric space.