Asymptotic geometry and growth of conjugacy classes of nonpositively curved manifolds (Q866982)

This paper concerns the asymptotic behavior of the function \(P\) mapping \(t\) to primitive closed geodesics of period inferior to \(t\) modulo free homotopy in a Riemannian manifold \(M\). Such a question has already been studied by Margulis and recently by Coornaert and Knieper. In this paper, the author gives a partial generalization. More precisely, a new asymptotic estimate is given for the growth rate of closed geodesics. The important fact is that the manifold \(M\) is not supposed to be compact or of finite volume.