Related papers: If all geodesics are closed on the projective plan…

Using the theory of geodesics on surfaces of revolution, we introduce the period function. We use this as our main tool in showing that any two-dimensional orbifold of revolution homeomorphic to S^2 must contain an infinite number of…

Let $M$ be a smooth compact surface of nonpositive curvature, with genus $\geq 2$. We prove the ergodicity of the geodesic flow on the unit tangent bundle of $M$ with respect to the Liouville measure under the condition that the set of…

We prove that any complete (and possibly non-compact) Riemannian manifold $M$ possesses infinitely many closed geodesics provided its free loop space has unbounded Betti numbers in degrees larger than the dimension of $M$, and there are no…

We prove that a closed negatively curved analytic Riemannian manifold that contains infinitely many totally geodesic hypersurfaces is isometric to an arithmetic hyperbolic manifold. Equivalently, any closed analytic Riemannian manifold with…

We prove the existence of immersed closed curves of constant geodesic curvature in an arbitrary Riemannian 2-sphere for almost every prescribed curvature. To achieve this, we develop a min-max scheme for a weighted length functional.

On a Riemannian 2-torus $(T^2,g)$ we study the geodesic flow in the case of low complexity described by zero topological entropy. We show that this assumption implies a nearly integrable behavior. In our previous paper \cite{GK} we already…

We classify compact surfaces with torsion-free affine connections for which every geodesic is a simple closed curve. In the process, we obtain completely new proofs of all the major results concerning the Riemannian case. In contrast to…

Let $M$ be a compact simply connected manifold satisfying $H^*(M;\mathbf{Q})\cong T_{d,n+1}(x)$ for integers $d\ge 2$ and $n\ge 1$. If all prime closed geodesics on $(M,F)$ with an irreversible bumpy Finsler metric $F$ are elliptic, either…

We prove that, on any closed manifold of dimension at least two with non-trivial first Betti number, a $C^\infty$ generic Riemannian metric has infinitely many closed geodesics, and indeed closed geodesics of arbitrarily large length. We…

We enumerate a necessary condition for the existence of infinitely many geometrically distinct, non-constant, prime closed geodesics on an arbitrary closed Riemannian manifold $M$. That is, we show that any Riemannian metric on $M$ admits…

This article consists of some loosely related remarks about the geometry of G_2-structures on 7-manifolds and is partly based on old unpublished joint work with two other people: F. Reese Harvey and Steven Altschuler. Much of this work has…

Suppose that the surfaces K0 and Kr are the boundaries of two convex, complete, connected C^2 bodies in R^3. Assume further that the (Euclidean) distance between any point x in Kr and K0 is always r (r > 0). For x in Kr, let {\Pi}(x) denote…

In this paper, we prove the existence of at least two distinct closed geodesics on every compact simply connected irreversible or reversible Finsler (including Riemannian) manifold of dimension not less than 2.

Let $M$ be a closed simply connected smooth manifold. Let $\F_p$ be the finite field with $p$ elements where $p> 0$ is a prime integer. Suppose that $M$ is an $\F_p$-elliptic space in the sense of [FHT91]. We prove that if the cohomology…

We prove that on closed Riemannian manifolds with infinite abelian, but not cyclic, fundamental group, any isometry that is homotopic to the identity possesses infinitely many invariant geodesics. We conjecture that the result remains true…

We study existence problems for closed $G_2$-structures with negative Ricci curvature, and we prove the $G_2$-Goldberg conjecture for noncompact manifolds. We first show that no closed manifold admits a closed $G_2$-structure with negative…

Topology and geometry are deeply intertwined in the study of surfaces, though their interaction manifests differently in smooth and discrete settings. In the smooth category, a classical result asserts that any closed smooth surface…

We study properties of typical closed geodesics on expander surfaces of high genus, i.e. closed hyperbolic surfaces with a uniform spectral gap of the Laplacian. Under an additional systole lower bound assumption, we show almost every…

We prove that for any reversible Finsler metric on S2, the number of prime closed geodesics grows quadratically with respect to length. The main tools are an improvement on Franks' theorem about the number of periodic points of…

We employ the curve shortening flow to establish three new results on the dynamics of geodesic flows of closed Riemannian surfaces. The first one is the stability, under $C^0$-small perturbations of the Riemannian metric, of certain flat…