THE MORSE INDEX OF A SADDLE POINT

This paper is devoted to clarifying the relationship between the classical Morse theory andthe Mountain Pass Lemma via the local linking concept.It is shown that for a C~1-function f with alocal linking,the m-thcritical group is nontrivial,where m is the Morse index.Combined with thebehavior of f at infinity,this result can be used to offer the existence of nontrivial critical points.