# Spectral Flow, Maslov Index and Bifurcation of Semi-Riemannian Geodesics

@article{Piccione2002SpectralFM,
title={Spectral Flow, Maslov Index and Bifurcation of Semi-Riemannian Geodesics},
author={Paolo Piccione and Alessandro Portaluri and Daniel V. Tausk},
journal={Annals of Global Analysis and Geometry},
year={2002},
volume={25},
pages={121-149}
}
• Published 5 November 2002
• Mathematics
• Annals of Global Analysis and Geometry
We give a functional analytical proof of the equalitybetween the Maslov index of a semi-Riemannian geodesicand the spectral flow of the path of self-adjointFredholm operators obtained from the index form. This fact, together with recent results on the bifurcation for critical points of strongly indefinite functionals imply that each nondegenerate and nonnull conjugate (or P-focal)point along a semi-Riemannian geodesic is a bifurcation point.In particular, the semi-Riemannian exponential map is…
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