On the generic nonexistence of rational geodesic foliations in the torus, Mather sets and Gromov hyperbolic spaces

Given a rational homology classh in a two dimensional torusT ², we show that the set of Riemannian metrics inT ² with no geodesic foliations having rotation numberh isC ^k dense for everyk N. We also show that, generically in theC ² topology, there are no geodesic foliations with rational rotation number. We apply these results and Mather's theory to show the following: let (M, g) be a compact, differentiable Riemannian manifold with nonpositive curvature, if (M, g) satisfies the shadowing property, then (M, g) has no flat, totally geodesic, immersed tori. In particular,M has rank one and the Pesin set of the geodesic flow has positive Lebesgue measure. Moreover, if (M, g) is analytic, the universal covering ofM is a Gromov hyperbolic space.Partially supported by CNPq-GMD, FAPERJ, and the University of Freiburg.