The flat-geodesic finiteness and ergodicity conjecture for nonpositively curved surfaces

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Let (M,g)(M,g) be a smooth, connected and closed surface of genus g≥2\mathfrak{g}\geq 2 with nonpositive curvature. A flat geodesic is a geodesic whose curvature vanishes along its entire trajectory; let Λ\Lambda be the set of their unit tangent vectors, and let ν\nu denote the natural invariant measure on SMSM.

Flat-geodesic finiteness conjecture. All flat geodesics are closed, and there are only finitely many homotopy classes of such geodesics. In particular,

ν(Λ)=0,\nu(\Lambda)=0,

and the geodesic flow on SMSM is ergodic.

The conjecture addresses whether the singular or flat geodesics form a negligible set and whether every such geodesic is periodic. The supplied source gives no resolution, so its status remains open.

References

Primary source

Weisheng Wu, “On ergodic properties of geodesic flows on uniform visibility manifolds without conjugate points”, arXiv:2405.11635 (2024).

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