Consider a connected, complete and compact Riemannian manifold $M$. Is it correct that the following equality holds: $\text{inj}(x)=\text{dist}\left(x,\text{CuL}(x)\right)$? Or in words that the injectivity radius of a point is the distance from the point to its cut locus.
Here is my explanation: As the manifold is compact and complete, then the cut locus $\text{CuL}(x)$ is compact as well[1]. Thus, there exists a point $y\in \text{CuL}(x)$ such that $\text{dist}\left(x,\text{CuL}(x)\right)=\text{dist}(x,y)$. Since $y$ is a cut point of $x$, there exists a tangent vector $\xi_0\in T_x M$ such that $y=\exp_x\left(c(\xi_0)\xi_0\right)$[2], where $c(\xi_0)$ is the distance from $x$ to its cut point in the $\xi_0$ direction. This in turn means that $\text{dist}(x,y) = c(\xi_0)$.
Recall that $\text{inj}(x)=\inf_{\xi\in T_x M}(c(\xi))$. This means that $\text{inj}(x) \leq c(\xi_0) = \text{dist}(x,y)=\text{dist}\left(x,\text{CuL}(x)\right)$. If $\text{inj}(x)< c(\xi_0)$, then since $M$ is compact, it means that there exists some other tangent vector $\xi\in T_x M$ with $c(\xi) < c(\xi_0)$. But this means that $\exp_x(c(\xi)\xi)$ is a cut point of $x$ closer to it then $y$, and this is a contradiction.
[1] See Contributions to Riemannian Geometry in the Large by W. Klingenberg
[2] Here I'm using the notation of I. Chavel in his book Riemannian Geometry – Modern Introduction.
Update(@dror)
Today I finally found a copy of the book *Riemannian Geometry" by Takashi Sakai, and there the above is stated as proposition 4.13 in chapter 3.
Thanks anyway.
Best Answer
The injectivity radius for a point $x$ is the largest distance $r$ such that any geodesic starting from x is length-minimizing for at least distance $r$. So there exists at least one geodesic starting from $x$ that is not length-minimizing past distance $r$. On the other hand a point $p$ is in the cut locus of $x$ if a geodesic starting from $x$ and passing through $p$ is not length-minimizing for any point past $p$. So the injectivity radius at $x$ is the distance from $x$ to its cut locus.