We prove that if a contact manifold admits an exact filling then every local contactomorphism isotopic to the identity admits a translated point in the interior of its support, in the sense of Sandon [San11b]. In addition we prove that if the Rabinowitz Floer homology of the filling is non-zero then every contactomorphism isotopic to the identity admits a translated point, and if the Rabinowitz Floer homology of the filling is infinite dimensional then every contactmorphism isotopic to the identity has either infinitely many translated points, or a translated point on a closed leaf. Moreover if the contact manifold has dimension greater than or equal to 3, the latter option generically doesn't happen. Finally, we prove that a generic contactomorphism on $\mathbb{R}^{2n+1}$ has infinitely many geometrically distinct iterated translated points all of which lie in the interior of its support.
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.
In this paper, we extend Rabinowitz Floer homology theory which has been established and extensively studied for hypersurfaces to coisotropic submanifolds of higher codimension. With this generalized version of Rabinowitz Floer homology theory, we explore the coisotropic intersection problem which interpolates between the Lagrangian intersection problem and the closed orbit problem. To be specific, we study the existence of leafwise intersection points on contact coisotropic submanifolds and the displaceability of stable coisotropic submanifolds.
Spectral invariant were introduced in Hamiltonian Floer homology by Viterbo, Oh, and Schwarz. We extend this concept to Rabinowitz Floer homology. As an application we derive new quantitative existence results for leaf-wise intersections. The importance of spectral invariants for the presented application is that spectral invariants allow us to derive existence of critical points of the Rabinowitz action functional even in degenerate situations where the functional is not Morse.
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 article we explain how critical points of a particular perturbation of the Rabinowitz action functional give rise to leaf-wise intersection points in hypersurfaces of restricted contact type. This is used to derive existence and multiplicity results for leaf-wise intersection points in hypersurfaces of restricted contact type in general exact symplectic manifolds. The notion of leaf-wise intersection points was introduced by Moser.
We study Liouville fillable contact manifolds $(Σ,ξ)$ with non-zero Rabinowitz Floer homology and assign spectral numbers to paths of contactomorphisms. As a consequence we prove that $\widetilde{\mathrm{Cont}_0}(Σ,ξ)$ is orderable in the sense of Eliashberg and Polterovich. This provides a new class of orderable contact manifolds. If the contact manifold is in addition periodic or a prequantization space $M \times S^1$ for $M$ a Liouville manifold, then we construct a contact capacity. This can be used to prove a general non-squeezing result, which amongst other examples in particular recover…
In this paper, we show that if the Rabinowitz Floer homology has infinite dimension, there exist infinitely many critical points of a Rabinowitz action functional even though it could be non-Morse. This result is proved by examining the filtered Rabinowitz 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…
The Rabinowitz-Floer homology of a Liouville domain W is the Floer homology of the free period Hamiltonian action functional associated to a Hamiltonian whose zero energy level is the boundary of W. It has been introduced by K. Cieliebak and U. Frauenfelder. Together with A. Oancea, the same authors have recently computed the Rabinowitz-Floer homology of the cotangent disk bundle D^*M of a closed manifold M, by establishing a long exact sequence. The first aim of this paper is to present a chain level construction of this exact sequence. In fact, we show that this sequence is the long homology…
In this note we study two index questions. In the first we establish the relationship between the Morse indices of the free time action functional and the fixed time action functional. The second is related to Rabinowitz Floer homology. Our index computations are based on a correction term which is defined as follows: around a non-degenerate Hamiltonian orbit lying in a fixed energy level a well-known theorem says that one can find a whole cylinder of orbits parametrized by the energy. The correction term is determined by whether the periods of the orbits are increasing or decreasing as one mo…
In this article we study Rabinowitz Floer Homology for several interaction particles. In general Rabinowitz action functional is invariant under simultaneous time translation for all particles but not invariant if the times of each particle are translated individually. The delayed Rabinowitz action functional is invariant under individual time translation for each particle. Although its critical point equation looks like a Hamiltonian delay equation it is actually an ODE in disguise and nothing else than the critical point equation of the undelayed Rabinowitz action functional. We show that we…
We define a quantitative invariant of Liouville cobordisms with monotone filling through an action-completed symplectic cohomology theory. We illustrate the non-trivial nature of this invariant by computing it for annulus subbundles of the tautological bundle over $\mathbb{C} P^1$ and give further conjectural computations based on mirror symmetry. We prove a non-vanishing result in the presence of Lagrangian submanifolds with non-vanishing Floer homology.
Will Merry computed Rabinowitz Floer homology above Mane's critical value in terms of loop space homology by establishing an Abbondandolo-Schwarz short exact sequence. The purpose of this article is to provide an alternative proof of Merry's result. We construct a continuation homomorphism for symplectic deformations which enables us to reduce the computation to the untwisted case. Our construction takes advantage of a special version of the isoperimetric inequality which above Mane's critical value holds true.
We study the following rigidity problem in symplectic geometry:can one displace a Lagrangian submanifold from a hypersurface? We relate this to the Arnold Chord Conjecture, and introduce a refined question about the existence of relative leaf-wise intersection points, which are the Lagrangian-theoretic analogue of the notion of leaf-wise intersection points defined by Moser. Our tool is Lagrangian Rabinowitz Floer homology, which we define first for Liouville domains and exact Lagrangian submanifolds with Legendrian boundary. We then extend this to the `virtually contact' setting. By means of …
We define the $S^1$-equivariant Rabinowitz-Floer homology of a bounding contact hypersurface $Σ$ in an exact symplectic manifold, and show by a geometric argument that it vanishes if $Σ$ is displaceable. In the appendix we describe an approach to transversality for Floer homologies for which the moduli space $\widehat M_J$ of all gradient flow lines is compact for some almost complex structure $J$. This approach uses a large set of perturbations, namely vector fields on the loop space, and selects from the possibly non-compact perturbed moduli spaces a part near $\widehat M_J$ that turns out t…
This thesis considers fillable contact structures on odd-dimensional manifolds. For that purpose, Rabinowitz-Floer homology (RFH) is used which was introduced by Cieliebak and Frauenfelder in 2009. A major part of the thesis is devoted to technical problems in the definition of RFH. In particular, it is shown that the moduli spaces involved are cut out transversally. Moreover, it is proved that RFH is essentially invariant under subcritical handle attachment. Finally, RFH is calculated for some Brieskorn manifolds. The obtained results are then used to show for every manifold, which supports f…
The Rabinowitz-Floer homology groups $RFH_*(M,W)$ are associated to an exact embedding of a contact manifold $(M,ξ)$ into a symplectic manifold $(W,ω)$. They depend only on the bounded component $V$ of $W\setminus M$. We construct a long exact sequence in which symplectic cohomology of $V$ maps to symplectic homology of $V$, which in turn maps to Rabinowitz-Floer homology $RFH_*(M,W)$, which then maps to symplectic cohomology of $V$. We compute $RFH_*(ST^*L,T^*L)$, where $ST^*L$ is the unit cosphere bundle of a closed manifold $L$. As an application, we prove that the image of an exact contact…
Consider the cotangent bundle of a Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ of dimension 2 or more, endowed with a twisted symplectic structure defined by a closed weakly exact 2-form $σ$ on $M$ whose lift to the universal cover of $M$ admits a bounded primitive. We compute the Rabinowitz Floer homology of energy hypersurfaces $Σ_{k}=H^{-1}(k)$ of mechanical (kinetic energy + potential) Hamiltonians $H$ for the case when the energy value k is greater than the Mane critical value c. Under the stronger condition that k>c_{0}, where c_{0} denotes the strict Mane critical value, Abbondandolo and Schwarz recent…
In this article, we focus on the invariance property of Morse homology on noncompact manifolds. We expect to apply outcomes of this article to several types of Floer homology, thus we define Morse homology purely axiomatically and algebraically. The Morse homology on noncompact manifolds generally depends on the choice of Morse functions; it is easy to see that critical points may escape along homotopies of Morse functions on noncompact manifolds. Even worse, homology classes also can escape along homotopies even though critical points are alive. The aim of the article is two fold. First, we g…
This paper constructs and studies the Rabinowitz (wrapped) Fukaya category, a categorical invariant of exact cylindrical Lagrangians in a Liouville manifold whose cohomological morphisms, ``Rabinowitz wrapped Floer homology groups" measure the failure of wrapped Floer cohomology to satisfy Poincare duality (and in particular vanish for any pair with at least one compact Lagrangian). Our main result, answering a conjecture of Abouzaid, relates the Rabinowitz and usual wrapped Fukaya category by way of a general construction introduced by Efimov, the categorical formal punctured neighborhood of …
We give criteria for the existence of bifurcations of symmetric periodic orbits in reversible Hamiltonian systems in terms of local equivariant Lagrangian Rabinowitz Floer homology. As an example, we consider the family of the direct circular orbits in the rotating Kepler problem and observe bifurcations of torus-type orbits. Our setup is motivated by numerical work of Hénon on Hill's lunar problem.
We study the dynamics and symplectic topology of energy hypersurfaces of mechanical Hamiltonians on twisted cotangent bundles. We pay particular attention to periodic orbits, displaceability, stability and the contact type property, and the changes that occur at the Mane critical value c. Our main tool is Rabinowitz Floer homology. We show that it is defined for hypersurfaces that are either stable tame or virtually contact, and it is invariant under under homotopies in these classes. If the configuration space admits a metric of negative curvature, then Rabinowitz Floer homology does not vani…
In this paper we construct the Floer homology for an action functional which was introduced by Rabinowitz and prove a vanishing theorem. As an application, we show that there are no displaceable exact contact embeddings of the unit cotangent bundle of a sphere of dimension greater than three into a convex exact symplectic manifold with vanishing first Chern class. This generalizes Gromov's result that there are no exact Lagrangian embeddings of a sphere into a complex vector space.
We give a definition of symplectic homology for pairs of filled Liouville cobordisms, and show that it satisfies analogues of the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms except for the dimension axiom. The resulting long exact sequence of a pair generalizes various earlier long exact sequences such as the handle attaching sequence, the Legendrian duality sequence, and the exact sequence relating symplectic homology and Rabinowitz Floer homology. New consequences of this framework include a Mayer-Vietoris exact sequence for symplectic homology, invariance of Rabinowitz Floer homology under subcritical handle…
These are lecture notes on Floer and Rabinowitz-Floer homology written for a graduate course at UNICAMP August-December 2016 and a mini-course held at IMPA in August 2017.
A contact manifold admittting a supporting contact form without contractible Reeb orbits is called hypertight. In this paper we construct a Rabinowitz Floer homology associated to an arbitrary supporting contact form for a hypertight contact manifold, and use this to prove versions of conjectures of Sandon and Mazzucchelli on the existence of translated points and invariant Reeb orbits, and to show that positive loops of contactomorphisms give rise to non-contractible Reeb orbits.
A positive contactomorphism of a contact manifold $M$ is the end point of a contact isotopy on $M$ that is always positively transverse to the contact structure. Assume that $M$ contains a Legendrian sphere $Λ$, and that $(M,Λ)$ is fillable by a Liouville domain $(W,ω)$ with exact Lagrangian $L$ such that $ω|_{π_2(W,L)}=0$. We show that if the exponential growth of the action filtered wrapped Floer homology of $(W,L)$ is positive, then every positive contactomorphism of $M$ has positive topological entropy. This result generalizes the result of Alves and Meiwes from Reeb flows to positive cont…
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…
In this article we consider a variant of Rabinowitz Floer homology in order to define a homological count of discriminant points for paths of contactomorphisms. The growth rate of this count can be seen as an analogue of Givental's nonlinear Maslov index. As an application we prove a Bott-Samelson type obstruction theorem for positive loops of contactomorphisms.
In this paper, we explore the structure of Rabinowitz--Floer homology $RFH_*$ on contact manifolds whose Reeb flow is periodic (and which satisfy an index condition such that $RFH_*$ is independent of the filling). The main result is that $RFH_*$ is a module over the Laurent polynomials $\mathbb{Z}_2[s,s^{-1}]$, where $s$ is the homology class generated by a principal Reeb orbit and the module structure is given by the pair-of-pants product. In most cases, this module is free and finitely generated.
We construct the TQFT on symplectic cohomology and wrapped Floer cohomology, possibly twisted by a local system of coefficients, and prove that the TQFT respects Viterbo restriction maps and the canonical maps from ordinary cohomology. We also construct the module structure of wrapped Floer cohomology over symplectic cohomology. These constructions yield new applications in symplectic topology relating to the Arnol'd chord conjecture and to exact contact embeddings. We prove that if a Liouville domain M admits an exact embedding into an exact convex symplectic manifold X, and the boundary of M…
The main goal of this paper is to give a unified treatment to many known cuplength estimates. As the base case, we prove that for $C^0$-perturbations of a function which is Morse-Bott along a closed submanifold, the number of critical points is bounded below in terms of the cuplength of that critical submanifold. As we work with rather general assumptions the proof also applies in a variety of Floer settings. For example, this proves lower bounds for the number of fixed points of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms, Hamiltonian chords for Lagrangian submanifolds, translated points of contactomorphisms…
