The Fermat Principle in General Relativity and Applications

In this paper we use a general version of Fermat's principle for light rays in General Relativity and a curve shortening method to write the Morse relations for light rays joining an event with a smooth timelike curve in a Lorentzian manifold with boundary. As a physical meaning, one can apply the Morse relations to have a mathematical description of the "gravitational lens effect" in a very general context.