On periodic orbits in cotangent bundles of non-compact manifolds

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the existence of periodic orbits on energy hypersurfaces in cotangent bundles of Riemannian manifolds defined by mechanical Hamiltonians. In \cite{bpv} it was proved that, provided certain geometric assumptions are satisfied, regular mechanical hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$, in particular non-compact ones, contain periodic orbits if one homology group among the top half does not vanish. In the present paper we extend the above mentioned existence result to a class of hypersurfaces in cotangent bundles of Riemannian manifolds with flat ends.