Geodesic flows of compact higher genus surfaces without conjugate points have expansive factors

Abstract In this paper we show that a geodesic flow of a compact surface without conjugate points of genus greater than one is time-preserving semi-conjugate to a continuous expansive flow which is topologically mixing and has a local product structure. As an application we show that the geodesic flow of a compact surface without conjugate points of genus greater than one has a unique measure of maximal entropy. This gives an alternative proof of Climenhaga–Knieper–War Theorem.