Geodesic loops and orthogonal geodesic chords without self-intersections
Differential Geometry
2025-08-15 v2
Abstract
We show that for a generic Riemannian metric on a compact manifold of dimension all geodesic loops based at a fixed point have no self-intersections. We also show that for an open and dense subset of the space of Riemannian metrics on an -disc with and with a strictly convex boundary there are geometrically distinct orthogonal geodesic chords without self-intersections. We use a perturbation result for intersecting geodesic segments of the author and a genericity statement due to Bettiol and Giamb\`o and existence results for orthogonal geodesic chords by Giamb\`o, Giannoni, and Piccione.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2407.02905,
title = {Geodesic loops and orthogonal geodesic chords without self-intersections},
author = {Hans-Bert Rademacher},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.02905},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
17 pages. Following the suggestions of the referee the Introduction has been extended and a few non-mathematical changes have been made