On the space of cone geodesics and positive paths of contactomorphisms

Abstract

Often it is possible to equip the space of all cone geodesics of a strongly convex cone structure with the structure of a smooth contact manifold. This generalizes the analogous notions for the space of light rays of a Lorentzian spacetime. After reviewing these constructions on the space of cone geodesics, with a focus on the natural contact structure, we establish a correspondence between positive paths of contactomorphisms in spherical cotangent bundles and certain globally hyperbolic cone structures.