We include generalizations to higher dimensions due to the unknown referee and Janko Latschev. We add examples of open sets with connected boundary on which the shell capacity is not continuous. 3rd and 4th version: minor changes, to appear in J. Fixed Point Theory Appl
We show that the spherical capacity is discontinuous on a smooth family of ellipsoidal shells. Moreover, we prove that the shell capacity is discontinuous on a family of open sets with smooth connected boundaries.
We use positive S^1-equivariant symplectic homology to define a sequence of symplectic capacities c_k for star-shaped domains in R^{2n}. These capacities are conjecturally equal to the Ekeland-Hofer capacities, but they satisfy axioms which allow them to be computed in many more examples. In particular, we give combinatorial formulas for the capacities c_k of any "convex toric domain" or "concave toric domain". As an application, we determine optimal symplectic embeddings of a cube into any convex or concave toric domain. We also extend the capacities c_k to functions of Liouville domains whic…
We give the first concrete examples of symplectic capacities that are not target-representable. This provides some answers to a question by Cieliebak, Hofer, Latschev, and Schlenk.
The ECH capacities are a sequence of numerical invariants of symplectic four-manifolds which give (sometimes sharp) obstructions to symplectic embeddings. These capacities are defined using embedded contact homology, and establishing their basic properties currently requires Seiberg-Witten theory. In this note we define a new sequence of symplectic capacities in four dimensions using only basic notions of holomorphic curves. The new capacities satisfy the same basic properties as ECH capacities and agree with the ECH capacities for the main examples for which the latter have been computed, nam…
In this paper we prove that the symplectic Brunn-Minkowski inequality, established by Artstein-Avidan and Ostrover for the Ekeland-Hofer-Zehnder capacity, fails to hold for the Gutt-Hutchings capacities of index greater than one.
For a convex domain in the standard Euclidean symplectic space which is invariant under a linear anti-symplectic involution $τ$ we show that its Ekeland-Hofer-Zehnder capacity is equal to the $τ$-symmetrical symplectic capacity of it.
A long-standing conjecture states that all normalized symplectic capacities coincide on the class of convex subsets of ${\mathbb R}^{2n}$. In this note we focus on an asymptotic (in the dimension) version of this conjecture, and show that when restricted to the class of centrally symmetric convex bodies in ${\mathbb R}^{2n}$, several symplectic capacities, including the Ekeland-Hofer-Zehnder capacity, the displacement energy capacity, and the cylindrical capacity, are all equivalent up to an absolute constant.
We prove that the generalized symplectic capacities recognize objects in symplectic categories whose objects are of the form $(M, ω)$, such that $M$ is a compact and 1-connected manifold, $ω$ is an exact symplectic form on $M$, and there exists a boundary component of $M$ with negative helicity. The set of generalized symplectic capacities is thus a complete invariant for such categories. This answers a question by Cieliebak, Hofer, Latschev, and Schlenk. It appears to be the first result concerning this question, except for recognition results for manifolds of dimension 2, ellipsoids, and pol…
We introduce a new normalization condition for symplectic capacities, which we call cube normalization. This condition is satisfied by the Lagrangian capacity and the cube capacity. Our main result is an analogue of the strong Viterbo conjecture for monotone toric domains in all dimensions. Moreover, we give a family of examples where standard normalized capacities coincide but not cube normalized ones. Along the way, we give an explicit formula for the Lagrangian capacity on a large class of toric domains.
Let $M$ be a closed Fano symplectic manifold with a semifree Hamiltonian circle action with isolated maximum. We compute the Gromov width and the Hofer-Zehnder capacity of $M$ using a moment map.
In this work we discuss a conjecture of Viterbo relating the symplectic capacity of a convex body and its volume. The conjecture states that among all 2n-dimensional convex bodies with a given volume the euclidean ball has maximal symplectic capacity. We present a proof of this fact up to a logarithmic factor in the dimension, and many classes of bodies for which this holds up to a universal constant.
We establish computational results concerning the Lagrangian capacity from "Cieliebak and Mohnke - Punctured holomorphic curves and Lagrangian embeddings". More precisely, we show that the Lagrangian capacity of a 4-dimensional convex toric domain is equal to its diagonal. The proof involves comparisons between the Lagrangian capacity, the McDuff-Siegel capacities from "McDuff and Siegel - Symplectic capacities, unperturbed curves, and convex toric domains", and the Gutt-Hutchings capacities from "Gutt and Hutchings - Symplectic capacities from positive S1-equivariant symplectic homology". Wor…
K. Cieliebak, H. Hofer, J. Latschev, and F. Schlenk (CHLS) posed the problem of finding a minimal generating set for the (symplectic) capacities on a given symplectic category. We show that if the category contains a certain one-parameter family of objects, then every countably Borel-generating set of (normalized) capacities has cardinality (strictly) bigger than the continuum. This appears to be the first result regarding the problem of CHLS, except for two results of D. McDuff about the category of ellipsoids in dimension 4. We also prove that every finitely differentiably generating set of …
A toric domain is a subset of $(\mathbb{C}^n,ω_{\text{std}})$ which is invariant under the standard rotation action of $\mathbb{T}^n$ on $\mathbb{C}^n$. For a toric domain $U$ from a certain large class for which this action is not free, we find a corresponding toric domain $V$ where the standard action is free, and for which $c(U)=c(V)$ for any symplectic capacity $c$. Michael Hutchings gives a combinatorial formula for calculating his embedded contact homology symplectic capacities for certain toric four-manifolds on which the $\mathbb{T}^2$-action is free. Our theorem allows one to extend t…
In this paper we give concrete estimations for the pseudo symplectic capacities of toric manifolds in combinatorial data. Some examples are given to show that our estimates can compute their pseudo symplectic capacities. As applications we also estimate the symplectic capacities of the polygon spaces. Other related results are impacts of symplectic blow-up on symplectic capacities, symplectic packings in symplectic toric manifolds, the Seshadri constant of an ample line bundle on toric manifolds, and symplectic capacities of symplectic manifolds with $S^1$-action.
In this paper we settle three basic questions concerning the Gutt-Hutchings capacities. Our primary result settles a version of the recognition question in the negative. We prove that the Gutt-Hutchings capacities together with the volume, do not constitute a complete set of symplectic invariants for star-shaped domains with smooth boundary. We also establish two independence properties. We prove that, even for star-shaped domains with smooth boundaries, these capacities are independent from the volume. We also prove that the capacities are mutually independent by constructing, for any $j \in …
Embedded contact homology gives a sequence of obstructions to four-dimensional symplectic embeddings, called ECH capacities. In "Symplectic embeddings into four-dimensional concave toric domains", the author, Choi, Frenkel, Hutchings and Ramos computed the ECH capacities of all "concave toric domains", and showed that these give sharp obstructions in several interesting cases. We show that these obstructions are sharp for all symplectic embeddings of concave toric domains into "convex" ones. In an appendix with Choi, we prove a new formula for the ECH capacities of convex toric domains, which …
ECH (embedded contact homology) capacities give obstructions to symplectically embedding one four-dimensional symplectic manifold with boundary into another. These obstructions are known to be sharp when the domain and target are ellipsoids (proved by McDuff), and more generally when the domain is a "concave toric domain" and the target is a "convex toric domain" (proved by Cristofaro-Gardiner). However ECH capacities often do not give sharp obstructions, for example in many cases when the domain is a polydisk. This paper uses more refined information from ECH to give stronger symplectic embed…
We introduce the notion of a symplectic capacity relative to a coisotropic submanifold of a symplectic manifold, and we construct two examples of such capacities through modifications of the Hofer-Zehnder capacity. As a consequence, we obtain a non-squeezing theorem for symplectic embeddings relative to coisotropic constraints and existence results for leafwise chords on energy surfaces.
While symplectic manifolds have no local invariants, they do admit many global numerical invariants. Prominent among them are the so-called symplectic capacities. Different capacities are defined in different ways, and so relations between capacities often lead to surprising relations between different aspects of symplectic geometry and Hamiltonian dynamics. In this paper we present an attempt to better understand the space of all symplectic capacities, and discuss some further general properties of symplectic capacities. We also describe several new relations between certain symplectic capaci…
In a previous paper, the second author used embedded contact homology (ECH) of contact three-manifolds to define "ECH capacities" of four-dimensional symplectic manifolds. In the present paper we prove that for a four-dimensional Liouville domain with all ECH capacities finite, the asymptotics of the ECH capacities recover the symplectic volume. This follows from a more general theorem relating the volume of a contact three-manifold to the asymptotics of the amount of symplectic action needed to represent certain classes in ECH. The latter theorem was used by the first and second authors to sh…
We introduce the concept of pseudo symplectic capacities which is a mild generalization of that of symplectic capacities. As a generalization of the Hofer-Zehnder capacity we construct a Hofer-Zehnder type pseudo symplectic capacity and estimate it in terms of Gromov-Witten invariants. The (pseudo) symplectic capacities of Grassmannians and some product symplectic manifolds are computed. As applications we first derive some general nonsqueezing theorems that generalize and unite many previous versions, then prove the Weinstein conjecture for cotangent bundles over a large class of symplectic u…
The third named author has been developing a theory of "higher" symplectic capacities. These capacities are invariant under taking products, and so are well-suited for studying the stabilized embedding problem. The aim of this note is to apply this theory, assuming its expected properties, to solve the stabilized embedding problem for integral ellipsoids, when the eccentricity of the domain has the opposite parity of the eccentricity of the target and the target is not a ball. For the other parity, the embedding we construct is definitely not always optimal; also, in the ball case, our methods…
In this work we bring together tools and ideology from two different fields, Symplectic Geometry and Asymptotic Geometric Analysis, to arrive at some new results. Our main result is a dimension-independent bound for the symplectic capacity of a convex body by its volume radius.
In this note we study the systoles of convex hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$ invariant under an anti-symplectic involution. We investigate a uniform upper bound of the ratio between the systole and the symmetric systole of the hypersurfaces using symplectic capacities from Floer theory. We discuss various concrete examples in which the ratio can be understood explicitly.
Define a "Liouville domain" to be a compact exact symplectic manifold with contact-type boundary. We use embedded contact homology to assign to each four-dimensional Liouville domain (or subset thereof) a sequence of real numbers, which we call "ECH capacities". The ECH capacities of a Liouville domain are defined in terms of the "ECH spectrum" of its boundary, which measures the amount of symplectic action needed to represent certain classes in embedded contact homology. Using cobordism maps on embedded contact homology (defined in joint work with Taubes), we show that the ECH capacities are …
For any Lie group $G$, we construct a $G$-equivariant analogue of symplectic capacities and give examples when $G = \mathbb{T}^k\times\mathbb{R}^{d-k}$, in which case the capacity is an invariant of integrable systems. Then we study the continuity of these capacities, using the natural topologies on the symplectic $G$-categories on which they are defined.
Inspired by the work of G. Lu on pseudo symplectic capacities we obtain several results on the Gromov width and the Hofer--Zehnder capacity of Hermitian symmetric spaces of compact type. Our results and proofs extend those obtained by Lu for complex Grassmannians to Hermitian symmetric spaces of compact type. We also compute the Gromov width and the Hofer--Zehnder capacity for Cartan domains and their products.
Roughly twenty five years ago Hofer asked: can the cylinder B^2(1) \times \mathbb{R}^{2(n-1)} be symplectically embedded into B^{2(n-1)}(R) \times \mathbb{R}^2 for some R>0? We show that this is the case if R \geq \sqrt{2^{n-1}+2^{n-2}-2}. We deduce that there are no intermediate capacities, between 1-capacities, first constructed by Gromov in 1985, and n-capacities, answering another question of Hofer. In 2008, Guth reached the same conclusion under the additional hypothesis that the intermediate capacities should satisfy the exhaustion property.
The ECH capacities are a sequence of real numbers associated to any symplectic four-manifold, which are monotone with respect to symplectic embeddings. It is known that for a compact star-shaped domain in R^4, the ECH capacities asymptotically recover the volume of the domain. We conjecture, with a heuristic argument, that generically the error term in this asymptotic formula converges to a constant determined by a "Ruelle invariant" which measures the average rotation of the Reeb flow on the boundary. Our main result is a proof of this conjecture for a large class of toric domains. As a corol…
We improve the estimates for the Ekeland--Hofer--Zehnder capacity of convex bodies by Gluskin and Ostrover. In the course of our argument we show that a closed characteristic of minimal action on the boundary of a centrally symmetric convex body in $\mathbb R^{2n}$ must itself be centrally symmetric, with generalizations to some other types of symmetry.
A strong version of a conjecture of Viterbo asserts that all normalized symplectic capacities agree on convex domains. We review known results showing that certain specific normalized symplectic capacities agree on convex domains. We also review why all normalized symplectic capacities agree on $S^1$-invariant convex domains. We introduce a new class of examples called "monotone toric domains", which are not necessarily convex, and which include all dynamically convex toric domains in four dimensions. We prove that for monotone toric domains in four dimensions, all normalized symplectic capaci…
We present recursive formulas which compute the recently defined "higher symplectic capacities" for all convex toric domains. In the special case of four-dimensional ellipsoids, we apply homological perturbation theory to the associated filtered L-infinity algebras and prove that the resulting structure coefficients count punctured pseudoholomorphic curves in cobordisms between ellipsoids. As sample applications, we produce new previously inaccessible obstructions for stabilized embeddings of ellipsoids and polydisks, and we give new counts of curves with tangency constraints.
In this paper, we firstly generalize the Brunn-Minkowski type inequality for Ekeland-Hofer-Zehnder symplectic capacity of bounded convex domains established by Artstein-Avidan-Ostrover in 2008 to extended symplectic capacities of bounded convex domains constructed by authors based on a class of Hamiltonian non-periodic boundary value problems recently. Then we introduce a class of non-periodic billiards in convex domains, and for them we prove some corresponding results to those for periodic billiards in convex domains obtained by Artstein-Avidan-Ostrover in 2012.
In this note we show that one open four dimensional ellipsoid embeds symplectically into another if and only the ECH capacities of the first are no larger than those of the second. This proves a conjecture due to Hofer. The argument uses the equivalence of the ellipsoidal embedding problem with a ball embedding problem that was recently established by McDuff. Its method is inspired by Hutchings' recent results on embedded contact homology (ECH) capacities but does not use them.
This paper is devoted to the construction of analogues of higher Ekeland-Hofer symplectic capacities for $P$-symmetric subsets in the standard symplectic space $(\mathbb{R}^{2n},ω_0)$, which is motivated by Long and Dong's study $P$-symmetric closed characteristics on $P$-symmetric convex bodies. We study the relationship between these capacities and other capacities, and give some computation examples. Moreover, we also define higher real symmetric Ekeland-Hofer capacities as a complement of Jin and the second named author's recent study of the real symmetric analogue about the first Ekeland-…
We use Floer homology to study the Hofer-Zehnder capacity of neighborhoods near a closed symplectic submanifold M of a geometrically bounded and symplectically aspherical ambient manifold. We prove that, when the unit normal bundle of M is homologically trivial in degree dim(M) (for example, if codim(M) > dim(M)), a refined version of the Hofer-Zehnder capacity is finite for all open sets close enough to M. We compute this capacity for certain tubular neighborhoods of M by using a squeezing argument in which the algebraic framework of Floer theory is used to detect nontrivial periodic orbits. …
This is the second installment in a series of papers aimed at generalizing symplectic capacities and homologies. We study symmetric versions of symplectic capacities for real symplectic manifolds, and obtain corresponding results for them to those of the first [19] of this series (such as representation formula, a theorem by Evgeni Neduv, Brunn-Minkowski type inequality and Minkowski billiard trajectories proposed by Artstein-Avidan-Ostrover).
For subsets in the standard symplectic space $(\mathbb{R}^{2n},ω_0)$ whose closures are intersecting with coisotropic subspace $\mathbb{R}^{n,k}$ we construct relative versions of the Ekeland-Hofer capacities of the subsets with respect to $\mathbb{R}^{n,k}$, establish representation formulas for such capacities of bounded convex domains intersecting with $\mathbb{R}^{n,k}$. We also prove a product formula and a fact that the value of this capacity on a hypersurface $\mathcal{S}$ of restricted contact type containing the origin is equal to the action of a generalized leafwise chord on $\mathca…