Manchester Geometry Seminar 2003/2004

Loop spaces and variational methods have long been used to find closed geodesics on manifolds and periodic orbits of Lagrangian systems (or at least to prove their existence). In this talk I will describe some ongoing joint work (with Chris McCord, Mark Roberts and Luca Sbano) on how this can be adapted to finding "relative" closed geodesics and periodic orbits: ie those which are closed relative to the action of a symmetry group.