A contribution to the closed geodesic problem

The closed geodesic problem has been solved by many authors under additional hypothesis. In this paper we develop a new way to solve this problem, by defining finitely many obstruction classes. This permits to enlarge significantly the family of manifolds for which this problem is solved. Our method which relies on the concept of A_∞-section of a homomorphism of differential graded algebras, shows explicitly how the natural structure of shc-algebra on the singular cochains of a space comes into play.