Qualitative counting closed geodesics

This article studies the geometry of word norms defined by geometrically motivated, infinite generating sets for subgroups of the fundamental groups of certain Riemannian manifolds. More concretely, consider a Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) and consider the set \(S\) of all closed geodesics through a point \(p\). The authors call the word norm on \(\Gamma_p = \langle S \rangle < \pi_1(M,p)\) the geodesic norm, and prove results showing that it has finite or infinite diameter depending on the geometry of the manifold. While no actual counting take place, the authors suggest interpreting the infinite diameter case as a scarcity, and the finite diameter case as abundance of closed geodesics. For closed manifolds of negative curvature admitting a geodesic symmetry at \(p\), Theorem 1.2 shows that the word norm has infinite diameter as long as \(\Gamma_p\) is nonabelian. For complete nonpositively curved manifold whose fundamental group is a finite index subgroup in a higher rank \(S\)-arithmetic Chevalley group, Theorem 1.3 shows that it the geodesic norm is finite diameter.

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