Iteration of closed geodesics in stationary Lorentzian manifolds

Following the lines of Bott in (Commun Pure Appl Math 9:171–206, 1956), we study the Morse index of the iterates of a closed geodesic in stationary Lorentzian manifolds, or, more generally, of a closed Lorentzian geodesic that admits a timelike periodic Jacobi field. Given one such closed geodesic γ, we prove the existence of a locally constant integer valued map Λ_γ on the unit circle with the property that the Morse index of the iterated γ ^N is equal, up to a correction term ε_γ∈{0,1}, to the sum of the values of Λ_γ at the N-th roots of unity. The discontinuities of Λ_γ occur at a finite number of points of the unit circle, that are special eigenvalues of the linearized Poincaré map of γ. We discuss some applications of the theory.