On the usefulness of an index due to Leray for studying the intersections of Lagrangian and symplectic paths

Using the ideas of Keller, Maslov introduced in the mid-1960's an index for Lagrangian loops, whose definition was clarified by Arnold. Leray extended Arnold results by defining an index depending on two paths of Lagrangian planes with transversal endpoints. We show that the combinatorial and topological properties of Leray's index suffice to recover all Lagrangian and symplectic intersection indices commonly used in symplectic geometry and its applications to Hamiltonian and quantum mechanics. As a by-product we obtain a new simple formula for the Hörmander index, and a definition of the Conley–Zehnder index for symplectic paths with arbitrary endpoints. Our definition leads to a formula for the Conley–Zehnder index of a product of two paths.