The index growth and multiplicity of closed geodesics (Q990171)

The authors prove the existence of at least two distinct closed geodesics on every compact simply connected Finsler 4-manifold. In the process of this proof, they also prove that, for every compact simply connected Finsler manifold with only one prime closed geodesic, that geodesic is irrational (in the sense of the second author) and not completely nondegenerate. A geodesic is irrational if its linearized Poincaré map rotates a 2-plane by an irrational angle. Their method is to combine their previous work on normal forms of symplectic matrices, with a monotonicity theorem for the Morse indices of iterates of any geodesic, and a study of the growth of the Morse indices of the iterates of any irrational geodesic.