The Length of a Shortest Geodesic Loop

Abstract

We give a lower bound for the length of a non-trivial geodesic loop on a simply-connected and compact manifold of even dimension with a non-reversible Finsler metric of positive flag curvature. Harris and Paternain use this estimate in their recent paper [HP] to give a geometric characterization of dynamically convex Finsler metrics on the 2-sphere.