Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2026 / iii / Paper 131 / 1

For a connected Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$, its Riemannian distance iswhere the infimum is over the piecewise smooth curves from $p$ to $q$. Connectedness of a smooth manifold implies path connectedness, so this set of curves is nonempty.

The Gauss lemma says that the differential of ${\exp }_p$ preserves the radial inner product: for $v,w\in T_{p}M$,Consequently radial geodesics from $p$ are orthogonal to the images of tangent vectors to spheres centred at the origin in $T_{p}M$. In a sufficiently small normal neighbourhood of $p$, this impliesevery competing curve has length at least the total variation of its radial coordinate, and the radial geodesic has that length.

The axioms $d_g(p,q)\ge 0$, symmetry, and the triangle inequality follow directly from length and concatenation. Certainly $d_g(p,p)=0$. If $q\ne p$, choose a normal ball $B_g(p,r)$ that does not contain $q$. Every curve from $p$ to $q$ first meets its boundary, and its initial part has length at least $r$ by the Gauss lemma. Hence $d_g(p,q)\ge r>0$. Thus $d_g(p,q)=0$ if and only if $p=q$.

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Choosewhere $r_p$ is a normal radius at $p$. Take piecewise smooth curves $c_j$ from $p$ to $q$ such that $L_g(c_j)\to d_g(p,q)$. Each $c_j$ first leaves the normal ball $B_g(p,\delta )$ at a point $p_j$. The Gauss lemma gives $d_g(p,p_j)=\delta$. The geodesic sphereis compact, because the tangent-space sphere is compact and ${\exp }_p$ is defined on it. After taking a convergent subsequence, let $p_j\to p_0$.

The part of $c_j$ after $p_j$ has length at least $d_g(p_j,q)$, so continuity of the Riemannian distance givesThe triangle inequality gives the reverse inequality. Therefore

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The metric $g$ is geodesically complete when every maximal affinely parametrized geodesic is defined on all of $\mathbb{R}$; equivalently, ${\exp }_p$ is defined on every $T_{p}M$ for every $p\in M$.

The Hopf-Rinow theorem says that for a connected Riemannian manifold, the following are equivalent: geodesic completeness; completeness of the Riemannian distance $d_g$; compactness of every closed bounded subset; and the existence, between every two points, of a length-minimizing geodesic. It is enough in the exponential-map formulation that ${\exp }_p$ be defined on all of $T_{p}M$ for one point $p$.

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The pointwise inequality $\hat{g}(X,X)\ge g(X,X)$ impliesEvery $d_{\hat{g}}$-Cauchy sequence $(x_j)$ is therefore $d_g$-Cauchy. Since $g$ is geodesically complete, the Hopf-Rinow theorem makes $(M,d_g)$ a complete metric space, so $x_j\to x$ in $d_g$ for some $x\in M$.

On a coordinate neighbourhood with compact closure around $x$, smooth positive-definite Riemannian metrics are uniformly equivalent. Thus there is $C>0$ such thatthere. For all sufficiently large $j$, a short $g$-geodesic from $x$ to $x_j$ stays in this neighbourhood, and henceThus $(M,d_{\hat{g}})$ is complete. Another application of Hopf-Rinow shows that $\hat{g}$ is geodesically complete.

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