Homotopical Dynamics IV: Hopf invariants and hamiltonian flows

In a non-compact context the first natural step in the search for periodic orbits of a hamiltonian flow is to detect bounded ones. In this paper we show that, in a non-compact setting, certain algebraic topological constraints imposed to a gradient flow of the hamiltonian function $f$ imply the existence of bounded orbits for the hamiltonian flow of $f$. Once the existence of bounded orbits is established, under favorable circumstances, application of the $C^1$-closing lemma leads to periodic ones.