Morse theory of causal geodesics in a stationary spacetime via Morse theory of geodesics of a Finsler metric (Q975293)

Morse theory has been applied successfully to spacetime geometry for Lorentzian manifolds and to global problems of general relativity. The difference with the Riemannian case is that the energy functional of a Lorentzian metric is unbounded both from below and above and the Morse index of its critical points is infinite. To develop Morse theory of a Lorentzian manifold, usually only timelike or lightlike geodesics are considered to restrict the index form to vector fields that are orthogonal to the geodesic in the timelike case and orthogonal modulo the vector fields pointwise collinear to the velocity vector field of the geodesic in the lightlike case. Then, the length functional on a finite-dimensional approximation of the path space is used. Another approach is to substitute the energy functional with a functional which has nice variational properties. This works for example for standard stationary Lorentzian manifolds. In the present paper, it is shown that for a standard stationary Lorentzian manifold, Morse theory of causal geodesics can be reduced to Morse theory of geodesics of a Finsler manifold of Randers type associated to the spacetime. It is shown that the number of conjugate instants along a lightlike or timelike geoedesic is equal to that of the corresponding Finslerian geodesic. Further, the Morse relations of lightlike or timelike geodesics joining a point with a limelike curve on the spacetime can be obtained from the Morse relations of the geodesics joining two points on the Finsler manifold. Although this reduction is very natural, it works well only on stationary spacetimes. It is also shown that Morse theory for geodesics connecting two points on a Finsler manifold can be handeled in a purely infinite-dimensional setting without using finite-dimensional approximations.