On the existence of Euler-Lagrange orbits satisfying the conormal boundary conditions (Q329628)

Let \((M,g)\) be a closed connected Riemannian manifold and let \(L:TM \rightarrow {\mathbb R}\) be a Tonelli Lagrangian (fiberwise convex and superlinear). In this article the author addresses the following question: Given two non-empty closed submanifolds \(Q_{0}, Q_{1} \subset M\), for which \( k\in {\mathbb R}\) does there exist a Hamiltonian orbit with energy \(k\) connecting the co-normal bundles \(N^{*}Q_0\) and \(N^{*}Q_1\)? Recall that \(N^{*}Q= \{(q,p) \in T^{*}M | q\in Q, T_qQ \subset \mathrm{ker} \;p\}\). For instance, in the case of the geodesic flow this means that the projection of the orbit is a curve that intersects both manifolds orthogonally. Other interesting examples are: \(Q_{0}= Q_{1}\) and when both manifolds are points. The orbits with energy \(k\) correspond to critical points of the free-time action functional defined in the space of paths connecting the manifolds. Variational methods or mountain path methods give minimizer or mini-max critical points (respectively). Using the concept of (Mañé) critical value for coverings, the author defines a critical value \(c(L;Q_{0}, Q_{1})\), and describes conditions on the space of paths for the existence of connecting orbits of minimizing type for \(k>c(L;Q_{0}, Q_{1})\). Other critical energy values are defined in order to deal with the mini-max orbits. The last section is dedicated to counter-examples in order to obtain some sharpness results.