The length of the second shortest geodesic

  • Alexander Nabutovsky

    University of Toronto, Canada
  • Regina Rotman

    University of Toronto, Canada

Abstract

According to the classical result of J. P. Serre ([S]) any two points on a closed Riemannian manifold can be connected by infinitely many geodesics. The length of a shortest of them trivially does not exceed the diameter of the manifold. But how long are the shortest remaining geodesics? In this paper we prove that any two points on a closed -dimensional Riemannian manifold can be connected by two distinct geodesics of length , where is the smallest value of such that the th homotopy group of the manifold is non-trivial.

Cite this article

Alexander Nabutovsky, Regina Rotman, The length of the second shortest geodesic. Comment. Math. Helv. 84 (2009), no. 4, pp. 747–755

DOI 10.4171/CMH/179