Bounded distance geodesic foliations in Riemannian planes (Q6042651)

In this work the authors consider the following conjecture by \textit{K. Burns} and \textit{G. Knieper} [J. Differ. Geom. 34, No. 3, 623--650 (1991; Zbl 0723.53024)] regarding the rigidity of Riemannian metrics without conjugate points: Conjecture: Let \(S\) be a simply connected surface with a complete Riemannian metric with no conjugate points. Suppose that \(\mathcal{F}\) is a foliation on \(S\) whose leaves are all geodesic lines, any two of which are at finite Hausdorff distance. Then \(S\) is flat. The authors give sufficient conditions for the conjecture to hold. The first condition (Theorem 1.1) is that the surface admits total curvature: Let \(K\colon S\to \mathbb{R}\) be the Gaussian curvature of a Riemannian metric \(g\) on \(S\). Set \(K^+ = \max\{K,0\}\), \(K^{-}=\min\{K,0\}\). Then \(S\) admits total curvature if either \(\int_S K^+\, d\mathrm{vol}(g)\) or \(\int_S K^-\, d\mathrm{vol}(g)\) are finite. The second condition (Theorem 1.2) is that \(S\) satisfies the visibility axiom from a point \(p\in S\), meaning that for any geodesic segment \(\gamma\) far enough away from \(p\), no matter how long it is, any two points on \(\gamma\) subtend an arbitrarily small angle at \(p\). To prove these two statements the authors study the topology of geodesic line foliations on complete Riemannian planes, showing (in Theorem 1.3) that such a foliation can only be the standard straight line foliation on \(\mathbb{R}^2\).