Periodic orbits for Hamiltonian systems in cotangent bundles

Abstract

We prove the existence of at least $cl(M)$ periodic orbits for certain time dependant Hamiltonian systems on the cotangent bundle of an arbitrary compact manifold $M$. These Hamiltonians are not necessarily convex but they satisfy a certain boundary condition given by a Riemannian metric on $M$. We discretize the variational problem by decomposing the time 1 map into a product of ``symplectic twist maps''. A second theorem deals with homotopically non trivial orbits in manifolds of negative curvature.