English

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 n3n\ge 3 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 nn-disc with n3n \ge 3 and with a strictly convex boundary there are nn 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.

Keywords

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

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:27:36.546Z