A FERMAT PRINCIPLE FOR STATIONARY SPACE-TIMES AND APPLICATIONS TO LIGHT RAYS

We present an extension of the classical Fermat principle in optics to stationary space-times. This principle is applied to study the light rays joining an event with a timelike curve. Existence and multiplicity results of light rays are proved. Moreover, Morse Relations relating the set of rays to the topology of the space-time are obtained, by using the number of conjugate points of the ray. The results hold also for stationary space-times with boundary, in particular the Kerr space-time outside the stationary limit surface.