On the energy functional on Finsler manifolds and applications to stationary spacetimes

In this paper, we first study some global properties of the energy functional on a non-reversible Finsler manifold. In particular we present a fully detailed proof of the Palais--Smale condition under the completeness of the Finsler metric. Moreover we define a Finsler metric of Randers type, which we call Fermat metric, associated to a conformally standard stationary spacetime. We shall study the influence of the Fermat metric on the causal properties of the spacetime, mainly the global hyperbolicity. Moreover we study the relations between the energy functional of the Fermat metric and the Fermat principle for the light rays in the spacetime. This allows one to obtain existence and multiplicity results for light rays, using the Finsler theory. Finally the case of timelike geodesics with fixed energy is considered. The research that led to the present paper was partially supported by a grant of the group GNAMPA of INdAM