Bumpy metrics on spheres and minimal index growth (Q523337)

This note deals with an index growth property that can be used to simplify the proof of the existence of two geometrically distinct closed geodesics on a sphere \(S^n\) of dimension \(n \geq 3\) with a bumpy and non-reversible Finsler metric, which was obtained independently by H. Duan and Y. Long [Multiple closed geodesics on bumpy Finsler spheres, J. Diff. Equ. 233 (2007), 221--240] and H.-B. Rademacher [The second closed geodesic on Finsler spheres of dimension \(n>2\), Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 362 (2010), 1413--1421]. The main result of the paper reads as follows: Proposition 1. Consider a bumpy and non-reversible Finsler metric on \(S^n\) and let \(N_1 \geq 5n\) be a number for which there is a prime closed geodesic \(c\) such that all closed geodesics \(d\) whose index satisfies \(\text{ind}(d) \leq N_1 + 2\) are geometrically equivalent to \(c\). Let \[ r:=\begin{cases} n, & \text{if } n \text{ is even},\\ (n+1)/2, & \text{if } n \text{ is odd} \end{cases} \] and \(m_1 := \max\{m \in \mathbb{N} : \text{ind}(c^{rm}) \leq N_1\}\). Then \(m_1 \geq 2\) and the closed geodesic \(c^r\) is of minimal index growth up to level \(m_1\), i.e., \[ \text{ind}(c^{rm}) = m\text{ ind}(c^r) - (m-1)(n-1), \] for all \(m \leq m_1\). The paper also contains a discussion on perturbations for \(L > 0\) of Katok metrics on \(S^{2n}\) to obtain non-reversible Finsler metrics with positive flag curvature carrying exactly \(2n\) geometrically distinct closed geodesics with length less than \(L\).