We show that if K: P \to R is an autonomous Hamiltonian on a symplectic manifold (P,Ω) which attains 0 as a Morse-Bott nondegenerate minimum along a symplectic submanifold M, and if c_1(TP)|_M vanishes in real cohomology, then the Hamiltonian flow of K has contractible periodic orbits with bounded period on all sufficiently small energy levels. As a special case, if the geodesic flow on the cotangent bundle of M is twisted by a symplectic magnetic field form, then the resulting flow has contractible periodic orbits on all low energy levels. These results were proven by Ginzburg and Gürel when Ω|_M is spherically rational, and our proof builds on their work; the argument involves constructing and carefully analyzing at the chain level a version of filtered Floer homology in the symplectic normal disc bundle to M.
We compute the Lagrangian Floer cohomology groups of certain tori in closed simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds arising from Fintushel-Stern knot surgery. These manifolds are usually not symplectically aspherical. As a result of the computation we observe examples where $HF(L_0)\cong HF(L_1)$ and $L_0$ and $L_1$ are smoothly isotopic but $L_0,L_1$ are not symplectically isotopic and are distinguished by $HF(L_0,L_1)$.
Rabinowitz Floer homology is the semi-infinite dimensional Morse homology associated to the Rabinowitz action functional used in the pioneering work of Rabinowitz. Gradient flow lines are solutions of a vortex-like equation. In this survey article we describe the construction of Rabinowitz Floer homology and its applications to symplectic and contact topology, global Hamiltonian perturbations and the study of magnetic fields.
In this paper, we study the behavior of the local Floer homology of an isolated fixed point and the growth of the action gap under iterations. To be more specific, we prove that an isolated fixed point of a Hamiltonian diffeomorphism remains isolated for a certain class of iterations (the so-called admissible iterations) and that the local Floer homology groups for all such iterations are isomorphic to each other up to a shift of degree. Furthermore, we study the pair-of-pants product in local Floer homology, and characterize a particular class of isolated fixed points (the symplectically dege…
In this paper, we compute contact homology of some quasi-regular contact structures, which admit Hamiltonian actions of Reeb type of Lie groups. We will discuss the toric contact case, (where the torus is of Reeb type), and the case of homogeneous contact manifolds. In both of these cases the quotients by the Reeb action are Kähler and admit perfect Morse-Bott functions via the moment map. It turns out that the contact homology depends only on the homology of the symplectic base and the bundle data of the contact manifolds as a circle bundle over the base. Moreover we can identify the relevant…
We use spectral invariants in Lagrangian Floer theory in order to show that there exist \emph{isometric} embeddings of normed linear spaces (finite or infinite dimensional, depending on the case) into the space of Hamiltonian deformations of certain Lagrangian submanifolds in tame symplectically aspherical manifolds. In addition to providing a new class of examples in which the Lagrangian Hofer metric can be computed explicitly, we refine and generalize some known results about it.
We compute the Floer homology of mapping classes which do not have any pseudo-Anosov components in the sense of Thurston's theory of surface diffeomorphisms. The formula for the Floer homology is obtained from a topological separation of fixed points and a separation mechanism for Floer connecting orbits. As examples, we consider the geometric monodromy of isolated plane curve singularities.
Rabinowitz Floer homology has been investigated on a submanifold of contact type. The contact condition, however, is quite restrictive. For example, a product of contact hypersurfaces is rarely of contact type. In this article, we study Rabinowitz Floer homology for a class of non-contact submanifolds. We show for this example that there are infinitely many leafwise intersection points by proving a Künneth formula for Rabinowitz Floer homology.
The objective of this note is to prove an existence result for brake orbits in classical Hamiltonian systems (which was first proved by S.V.Bolotin) by using Floer theory. To this end, we compute an open string analogue of symplectic homology (so called wrapped Floer homology) of some domains in cotangent bundles, which appear naturally in the study of classical Hamiltonian systems. The main part of the computations is to show invariance of wrapped Floer homology under certain handle attaching to domains.
A new relation between homoclinic points and Lagrangian Floer homology is presented: In dimension two, we construct a Floer homology generated by primary homoclinic points. We compute two examples and prove an invariance theorem. Moreover, we establish a link to the (absolute) flux and growth of symplectomorphisms.
We use Liu-Tian's virtual moduli cycle methods to construct detailedly the explicit isomorphism between Floer homology and quantum homology for any closed symplectic manifold that was first outlined by Piunikhin, Salamon and Schwarz for the case of the semi-positive symplectic manifolds.
We describe a connection between symplectic Floer homology for symplectomorphisms of surface and Nielsen fixed point theory. A new zeta functions and asymptotic invariant of symplectic origin are defined. We show that special values of symplectic zeta functions are Reidemeister torsions.
Let M be a closed, connected and oriented 3-manifold. This article is the first of a five part series that constructs an isomorphism between the Heegaard Floer homology groups of M and the corresponding Seiberg-Witten Floer homology groups of M.
We construct the vortex Floer homology group $VHF (M,μ;H)$ for an aspherical Hamiltonian $G$-manifold $(M, ω)$ with moment map $μ$ and a class of $G$-invariant Hamiltonian loop $H_t$, following the proposal of [3]. This is a substitute for the ordinary Hamiltonian Floer homology of the symplectic quotient of $M$. We achieve the transversality of the moduli space by the classical perturbation argument instead of the virtual technique, so the homology can be defined over ${\mathbb Z}$ or ${\mathbb Z}_2$.
We consider Floer homology associated to a pair of closed Lagrangian submanifolds that satisfy a monotonicty assumption. If the Lagrangians intersect cleanly we decribe two spectral sequences which help to compute their Floer homology. The spectral sequences are constructed using a Morse-Bott version of Floer homology. We give a full treatment of the theory including orientations.
The rational homology balls $B_n$ appeared in Fintushel and Stern's rational blow-down construction [FS2]. Later, Symington [Sy1], defined this operation in the symplectic category. In [Kh2], the author defined the inverse procedure, the symplectic rational blow-up. In this paper, we study the obstructions to symplectically rationally blowing up a symplectic 4-manifold, i.e. the obstructions to symplectically embedding the rational homology balls $B_n$ into a symplectic 4-manifold. We prove a theorem and give additional examples which suggest that in order to symplectically embed the rational …
We prove that the Knot Floer homology group of a fibred knot of genus g in the Alexander grading 1-g is isomorphic to a version of the fixed point Floer homology of an area-preserving representative of the monodromy.
We define combinatorial Floer homology of a transverse pair of noncontractibe nonisotopic embedded loops in an oriented 2-manifold without boundary, prove that it is invariant under isotopy, and prove that it is isomorphic to the original Lagrangian Floer homology.
This paper extends the definition of Rabinowitz Floer homology to non-compact hypersurfaces. We present a general framework for the construction of Rabinowitz Floer homology in the non-compact setting under suitable compactness assumptions on the periodic orbits and the moduli spaces of Floer trajectories. We introduce a class of hypersurfaces being the level sets of specific Hamiltonians: strongly tentacular Hamiltonians, for which the compactness conditions are satisfied, thus enabling us to define the Rabinowitz Floer homology for this class. Rabinowitz Floer homology in turn serves as a to…
Let (M,ω) be a compact symplectic manifold, and ϕbe a symplectic diffeomorphism on M, we define a Floer-type homology FH_*(ϕ) which is a gen- eralization of Floer homology for symplectic fixed points defined by Dostoglou and Salamon for monotone symplectic manifolds. These homology groups are modules over a suitable Novikov ring and depend only on ϕup to a Hamiltonian isotopy.
Various Seiberg-Witten Floer cohomologies are defined for a closed, oriented 3-manifold; and if it is the mapping torus of an area-preserving surface automorphism, it has an associated periodic Floer homology as defined by Michael Hutchings. We construct an isomorphism between a certain version of Seiberg-Witten Floer cohomology and the corresponding periodic Floer homology, and describe some immediate consequences.
Knot Floer homology is a knot invariant defined using holomorphic curves. In more recent work, taking cues from bordered Floer homology,the authors described another knot invariant, called "bordered knot Floer homology", which has an explicit algebraic and combinatorial construction. In the present paper, we extend the holomorphic theory to bordered Heegaard diagrams for partial knot projections, and establish a pairing result for gluing such diagrams, in the spirit of the pairing theorem of bordered Floer homology. After making some model calculations, we obtain an identification of a variant…
In this paper we extend the results of \cite{Plumbing} to calculate Ozsváth-Szabó Floer homology group HF+ for a class of negative-semidefinite plumbings with b_1 = 1.
We define the Floer complex for Hamiltonian orbits on the cotangent bundle of a compact manifold satisfying non-local conormal boundary conditions. We prove that the homology of this chain complex is isomorphic to the singular homology of the natural path space associated to the boundary conditions.
This is the last of five papers that construct an isomorphism between the Seiberg-Witten Floer homology and the Heegaard Floer homology of a given compact, oriented 3-manifold.
We develop a skein exact sequence for knot Floer homology, involving singular knots. This leads to an explicit, algebraic description of knot Floer homology in terms of a braid projection of the knot.
Using the combinatorial approach to Heegaard Floer homology we obtain a relatively easy formula for computation of hat Heegaard Floer homology for the three-manifold obtained by rational surgery on a knot K inside a homology sphere Y.
In general, Lagrangian Floer homology - if well-defined - is not isomorphic to singular homology. For arbitrary closed Lagrangian submanifolds a local version of Floer homology is defined in [Flo89, Oh96] which is isomorphic to singular homology. This construction assumes that the involved Hamiltonian function $H$ is sufficiently $C^2$-small and the almost complex structure is sufficiently standard. In this note we develop a new construction of local Floer homology which works for any (compatible) almost complex structure and all Hamiltonian function with Hofer norm less than the minimal (symp…
We fix an orientation issue which appears in our previous paper about the isomorphism between Floer homology of cotangent bundles and loop space homology. When the second Stiefel-Whitney class of the underlying manifold does not vanish on 2-tori, this isomorphism requires the use of a twisted version of the Floer complex.
This is the fourth of five papers that construct an isomorphism between the Seiberg-Witten Floer homology and the Heegaard Floer homology of a given compact, oriented 3-manifold. The isomorphism is given as a composition of three isomorphisms; the first of these relates a version of embedded contact homology on an an auxillary manifold to the Heegaard Floer homology on the original. The second isomorphism relates the relevant version of the embedded contact homology on the auxilliary manifold with a version of the Seiberg-Witten Floer homology on this same manifold. The third isomorphism relat…
This article is a standalone introduction to sutured Floer homology for graduate students in geometry and topology. It is divided into three parts. The first part is an introductory level exposition of Lagrangian Floer homology. The second part is a construction of Heegaard Floer homology as a special, and slightly modified, case of Lagrangian Floer homology. The third part covers the background on sutured manifolds, the definition of sutured Floer homology, as well as a discussion of its most basic properties and implications (it detects the product, behaves nicely under surface decomposition…
In this article we address two issues. First, we explore to what extent the techniques of Piunikhin, Salamon and Schwarz in [PSS96] can be carried over to Lagrangian Floer homology. In [PSS96] an isomorphism between Hamiltonian Floer homology and the singular homology is established. In contrast, Lagrangian Floer homology is not isomorphic to the singular homology of the Lagrangian submanifold, in general. Depending on the minimal Maslov number, we construct for certain degrees two homomorphisms between Lagrangian Floer homology and singular homology. In degrees where both maps are defined we …
In this paper, we write down a special Heegaard diagram for a given product three manifold $Σ_g\times S^1$. We use the diagram to compute its perturbed Heegaard Floer homology.
We prove the Arnold-Givental conjecture for a class of Lagrangian submanifolds in Marsden-Weinstein quotients which are fixpoint sets of some antisymplectic involution. For these Lagrangians the Floer homology cannot in general be defined by standard means due to the bubbling phenomenon. To overcome this difficulty we consider moment Floer homology whose boundary operator is defined by counting solutions of the symplectic vortex equations on the strip which have better compactness properties than the original Floer equations.
This paper is the sequel to "The equivalence of Heegaard Floer homology and embedded contact homology via open book decompositions I" and is devoted to proving some of the technical parts of the HF=ECH isomorphism.
We define a version of spectral invariant in the vortex Floer theory for a $G$-Hamiltonian manifold $M$. This defines potentially new (partial) symplectic quasi-morphism and quasi-states when $M//G$ is not semi-positive. We also establish a relation between vortex Hamiltonian Floer homology and Woodward's quasimap Floer homology by constructing a closed-open string map between them. This yields applications to study non-displaceability problems of subsets in $M//G$
This article is a survey on the authors' proof of the isomorphism between Heegaard Floer homology and embedded contact homology appeared in This article is a survey on the authors' proof of the isomorphism between Heegaard Floer homology and embedded contact homology appeared in arXiv:1208.1074, arXiv:1208.1077 and arXiv:1208.1526.
We show that if K is a non-trivial knot inside a homology sphere Y, then the rank of knot Floer homology associated with K is strictly bigger than the rank of Heegaard Floer homology of Y.
For an adiscal or monotone regular coisotropic submanifold $N$ of a symplectic manifold I define its Floer homology to be the Floer homology of a certain Lagrangian embedding of $N$. Given a Hamiltonian isotopy $ϕ=(ϕ^t)$ and a suitable almost complex structure, the corresponding Floer chain complex is generated by the $(N,ϕ)$-contractible leafwise fixed points. I also outline the construction of a local Floer homology for an arbitrary closed coisotropic submanifold. Results by Floer and Albers about Lagrangian Floer homology imply lower bounds on the number of leafwise fixed points. This repro…
Knot Floer homology is an invariant for knots discovered by the authors and, independently, Jacob Rasmussen. The discovery of this invariant grew naturally out of studying how a certain three-manifold invariant, Heegaard Floer homology, changes as the three-manifold undergoes Dehn surgery along a knot. Since its original definition, thanks to the contributions of many researchers, knot Floer homology has emerged as a useful tool for studying knots in its own right. We give here a few selected highlights of this theory, and then move on to some new algebraic developments in the computation of k…
We show that the integer homology sphere obtained by splicing two nontrivial knot complements in integer homology sphere L-spaces has Heegaard Floer homology rank strictly greater than one. In particular, splicing the complements of nontrivial knots in the 3-sphere never produces an L-space. The proof uses bordered Floer homology.
This is a translation of an article appeared in Japanese in Suugaku 63 (2011), no. 1, 43-66 (MR2790665) and is a survey of Lagrangian Floer homology which the author studies jointly with Y.-G.Oh, H. Ohta, and K. Ono. It also contains some explanation on its relation to (homological) mirror symmetry.
Using the combinatorial approach to knot Floer homology, we define an invariant for Legendrian knots in the three-sphere, which takes values in link Floer homology. This invariant can be used to also construct an invariant of transverse knots.
Let $K$ be a null-homologous knot in a three-manifold $Y$. We give a description of the Heegaard Floer homology of integer surgeries on $Y$ along $K$ in terms of the filtered homotopy type of the knot invariant for $K$. As an illustration, we calculate the Heegaard Floer homology groups of non-trivial circle bundles over Riemann surfaces.
Using contact-geometric techniques and sutured Floer homology, we present an alternate formulation of the minus and plus version of knot Floer homology. We further show how natural constructions in the realm of contact geometry give rise to much of the formal structure relating the various versions of Heegaard Floer homology. In addition, to a Legendrian or transverse knot K in a contact manifold (Y,ξ), we associate distinguished classes EHL(K) in the minus-version of knot floer homology and EHIL(K) in the plus version, which are each invariant under Legendrian or transverse isotopies of K. Th…
We explain how to use bordered algebras to compute a version of link Floer homology. As a corollary, we also give a fast computation of the Thuston polytope for links in the three-sphere.
This is a survey of bordered Heegaard Floer homology, an extension of the Heegaard Floer invariant HF-hat to 3-manifolds with boundary. Emphasis is placed on how bordered Heegaard Floer homology can be used for computations.
In this paper we extend the idea of bordered Floer homology to knots and links in $S^3$: Using a specific Heegaard diagram, we construct gluable combinatorial invariants of tangles in $S^3$, $D^3$ and $I\times S^2$. The special case of $S^3$ gives back a stabilized version of knot Floer homology.
Let $K$ denote a knot inside the homology sphere $Y$. The zero-framed longitude of $K$ gives the complement of $K$ in $Y$ the structure of a bordered three-manifold, which may be denoted by $Y(K)$. We compute the quasi-isomorphism type of the bordered Floer complex of $Y(K)$ in terms of the knot Floer complex associated with $K$. As a corollary, we show that if a homology sphere has the same Heegaard Floer homology as $S^3$ it does not contain any incompressible tori. Consequently, if $Y$ is an irreducible homology sphere $L$-space then $Y$ is either $S^3$, or the Poicaré sphere $Σ(2,3,5)$, or…
Link Floer homology is an invariant for links defined using a suitable version of Lagrangian Floer homology. In an earlier paper, this invariant was given a combinatorial description with mod 2 coefficients. In the present paper, we give a self-contained presentation of the basic properties of link Floer homology, including an elementary proof of its invariance. We also fix signs for the differentials, so that the theory is defined with integer coefficients.
