On the number of geodesic segments connecting two points on manifolds of non-positive curvature

Abstract

In this paper we show that on a complete Riemannian manifold of negative curvature and dimension $n>1$ every two points which realize a local maximum for the distance function are connected by at least $2n+1$ geometrically distinct geodesic segments (i.e. length minimizing). Using a similar method, we obtain that in the case of non-positive curvature, for every two points with the same property as above the number of connecting distinct geodesic segments is at least $n+1$.