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I am trying to read the paper "Simple closed geodesics on convex surfaces" by E.Calabi and J. Cao and a certain passage is unclear for me. Before, let me contextualize and set up some notation.

Let $\gamma$ be a simple closed geodesic in a Riemannian sphere $(M^2, g)$ and let $\Omega_j$, $j=1,2$, be the two domains determined by $\gamma$ in $M$. Denote by $UM$ the unit circle bundle of $M$. For fixed $j=1,2$, let $N$ the inwardly pointing unit normal for $\partial \Omega_j$, and let

$$U^+ \partial \Omega_j = \{ v \in T_p M : p \in \partial \Omega_j, \vert v \vert = 1 \text{ and } g(v,N(p)) > 0 \}.$$

For $v \in U^+ \partial \Omega_j$ with $v \in T_p M$, let $\sigma_v$ be a geodesic with $\sigma_v(0) = p$ and $\sigma_v'(0) = v$. Also, let $l(v)$ be the smallest $t > 0$ such that $\sigma_v(t) \in \partial \Omega_j$. Finally, define

$$W(\Omega_j) = \inf \{ l(v) : v \in U^+ \partial \Omega_j\}$$

to be the width of $\Omega_j$.

The authors then write the following:

enter image description here

The problem is that the reference to Santaló's formula in the paper is wrong.

Questions: Could you help me to understand the above inequalities, please? Do you have a reference for the mentioned formula?

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    $\begingroup$ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santaló%27s_formula ? $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 25, 2023 at 3:54
  • $\begingroup$ @FrancoisZiegler perfect! Forgot to search in Wiki 😅 $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 25, 2023 at 16:39
  • $\begingroup$ @FrancoisZiegler could you make answer from your comment, so the question will be removed from unanswered list? $\endgroup$ Commented Feb 3, 2023 at 15:49

1 Answer 1

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(Comment $\to$ answer per request:) Santaló’s formula has its wikipedia page.

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