Fine structure of Zoll spectra (Q5961816)

Let a compact Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) be a Zoll manifold; this means that all the geodesics on \(M\) are closed. The author studies the spectral geometry of these manifolds. The spectrum of \(\sqrt{\Delta}\) concentrates along the arithmetic progression \(\{(2\pi/T)(k+\beta/4):k=1,2,...\}\) where \(T\) is the minimal period of the geodesic flow and where \(\beta\) is the common Morse index of the \(T\) periodic geodesics. The paper determines the limit distribution of the eigenvalues in the clusters and extends previous work of \textit{A. Weinstein} [Geom. sympl. Phys. math., Colloq. int. Aix-en-Provence 1974, 289-298 (1975; Zbl 0327.58013); Duke Math J. 44, 883-892 (1977; Zbl 0385.58013)]; the asymptotics involve a second term in the Jacobi fields. The author also shows that the cluster projections define almost isometric minimal immersions of \((M,g)\) into spheres; in the case of maximally degenerate Zoll metrics, the errors are of rapid decay.