Geodesic nets on non-compact Riemannian manifolds

Abstract

A geodesic flower is a finite collection of geodesic loops based at the same point $p$ that satisfy the following balancing condition: The sum of all unit tangent vectors to all geodesic arcs meeting at $p$ is equal to the zero vector. In particular, a geodesic flower is a stationary geodesic net. We prove that in every complete non-compact manifold with locally convex ends there exists a non-trivial geodesic flower.