High action orbits for Tonelli Lagrangians and superlinear Hamiltonians on compact configuration spaces

Multiplicity results for solutions of various boundary value problems are known for dynamical systems on compact configuration manifolds, given by Lagrangians or Hamiltonians which have quadratic growth in the velocities or in the momenta. Such results are based on the richness of the topology of the space of curves satisfying the given boundary conditions. In this note we show how these results can be extended to the classical setting of Tonelli Lagrangians (Lagrangians which are C-2 -convex and superlinear in the velocities), or to Hamiltonians which are superlinear in the momenta and have a coercive action integrand. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.