Birkhoff Program for Geodesic Flows of Surfaces and Applications: Homoclinics

Abstract

We show that a Kupka–Smale riemannian metric on a closed surface contains a finite primary set of closed geodesics, i.e. they intersect any other geodesic and divide the surface into simply connected regions. From them we obtain a finite set of disjoint surfaces of section of genera 0 or 1, which intersect any orbit of the geodesic flow. As an application we obtain that the geodesic flow of a Kupka–Smale riemannian metric on a closed surface has homoclinic orbits for all branches of all of its hyperbolic closed geodesics.