Assume M is a closed connected smooth manifold and H:T^*M->R a smooth proper function bounded from below. Suppose the sublevel set {H<d} contains the zero section and αis a non-trivial homotopy class of free loops in M. Then for almost every s>=d the level set {H=s} carries a periodic orbit z of the Hamiltonian system (T^*M,ω_0,H) representing α.
Examples show that the condition that {H<d} contains M is necessary and almost existence cannot be improved to everywhere existence.
For many classes of symplectic manifolds, the Hamiltonian flow of a function with sufficiently large variation must have a fast periodic orbit. This principle is the base of the notion of Hofer-Zehnder capacity and some other symplectic invariants and leads to numerous results concerning existence of periodic orbits of Hamiltonian flows. Along these lines, we show that given a negatively curved manifold M, a neigbhourhood U of M in the cotangent bundle, a sufficiently small magnetic field and a non-trivial free homotopy class of loops, then the magnetic flow of a Hamiltonian with big enough va…
Let $M$ be a closed manifold and consider the Hamiltonian flow associated to an autonomous Tonelli Hamiltonian $H:T^*M\rightarrow \mathbb R$ and a twisted symplectic form. In this paper we study the existence of contractible periodic orbits for such a flow. Our main result asserts that if $M$ is not aspherical, then contractible periodic orbits exist for almost all energies above the maximum critical value of $H$.
We construct a minimax selector for eventually quadratic hamiltonians on cotangent bundles. We use it to give a relation between Hofer's energy and Mather's action minimizing function. We also study the local flatness of the set of twist maps.
Let $M$ be a compact manifold with an effective semi-free circle action whose fixed point set has trivial normal bundle. We prove that its cotangent bundle endowed with the canonical symplectic form has bounded Hofer-Zehnder sensitive capacity. We give several examples like the product of any compact manifold with $§^n$ or a connected sum $\CP^n # ... # \CP^n$.
We show that the Hamiltonian action satisfies the Palais-Smale condition over a "mixed regularity" space of loops in cotangent bundles, namely the space of loops with regularity $H^s$, $s\in (\frac 12, 1)$, in the base and $H^{1-s}$ in the fiber direction. As an application, we give a simplified proof of a theorem of Hofer-Viterbo on the existence of closed characteristic leaves for certain contact type hypersufaces in cotangent bundles.
We consider an entropy-type invariant which measures the polynomial volume growth of submanifolds under the iterates of a map, and we establish sharp uniform lower bounds of this invariant for the following classes of symplectomorphisms of cotangent bundles over a compact base: 1) non-identical compactly supported symplectomorphisms which are symplectically isotopic to the identity, 2) symplectomorphisms generated by classical Hamiltonian functions, 3) Dehn twist like symplectomorphisms over compact rank one symmetric spaces.
If the homology of the free loop space of a closed manifold B is infinite dimensional then generically there exist infinitely many leaf-wise intersection points for fiber-wise star-shaped hypersurfaces in T*B.
For a class of closed manifolds N, we construct a family of functions on the Hamiltonian group G of the cotangent bundle T*N. These restrict to homogeneous quasi-morphisms on the subgroup generated by Hamiltonians with support in a given cotangent ball bundle. The family is parametrized by the first real cohomology of N, and in the case N=T^n, it coincides with Viterbo's symplectic homogenization operator. These functions have applications to the algebraic and geometric structure of G and its subgroups, to symplectic rigidity, and to Aubry-Mather and weak KAM theory.
We prove the Conley conjecture for cotangent bundles of oriented, closed manifolds, and Hamiltonians which are quadratic at infinity, i.e., we show that such Hamiltonians have infinitely many periodic orbits. For the conservative systems, similar results have been proved by Lu and Mazzucchelli using convex Hamiltonians and Lagrangian methods. Our proof uses Floer homological methods from Ginzburg's proof of the Conley Conjecture for closed symplectically aspherical manifolds.
The main theme of this paper is a relative version of the almost existence theorem for periodic orbits of autonomous Hamiltonian systems. We show that almost all low levels of a function on a geometrically bounded symplectically aspherical manifold carry contractible periodic orbits of the Hamiltonian flow, provided that the function attains its minimum along a closed symplectic submanifold. As an immediate consequence, we obtain the existence of contractible periodic orbits on almost all low energy levels for twisted geodesic flows with symplectic magnetic field. We give examples of functions…
We give an proof on the Weinstein conjecture on the cotangent bundles of open manifolds. Its proof is based on Gromov's nonlinear Fredholm alternative.
For every nontrivial free homotopy class $α$ of loops in every closed connected Riemannian manifold $M$, we prove existence of a noncontractible 1-periodic orbit, for every compactly supported time-dependent Hamiltonian on the open unit cotangent bundle which is sufficiently large over the zero section. The proof shows that the Biran-Polterovich-Salamon capacity is finite for every closed connected Riemannian manifold and every free homotopy class of loops. This implies a dense existence theorem for periodic orbits on level hypersurfaces and, consequently, a refined version of the Weinstein co…
We introduce the concept of fittings to symplectic fillings of the unit cotangent bundle of odd-dimensional spheres. Assuming symplectic asphericity we show that all fittings are diffeomorphic to the respective unit co-disc bundle.
We prove the finiteness of the Hofer-Zehnder capacity of unit disk cotangent bundles of closed Riemannian manifolds, under some simple topological assumptions on the manifolds. The key ingredient of the proof is a computation of the pair-of-pants product on Floer homology of cotangent bundles. We reduce it to a simple computation of the loop product, making use of results of A.Abbondandolo- M.Schwarz.
We construct a family version of symplectic Floer cohomology for magnetic cotangent bundles, without any restrictions on the magnetic form, using the dissipative method for compactness introduced in \cite{Groman2015}. As an application, we deduce that if $N$ is a closed manifold and $ σ$ is a magnetic form that is not weakly exact, then the $ π_1$-sensitive Hofer-Zehnder capacity of any compact set in the magnetic cotangent bundle determined by $ σ$ is finite.
We extend constructions and results of Damian to get topological obstructions to the existence of closed monotone Lagrangian embeddings into the cotangent bundle of a space which is the total space of a fibration over the circle.
We define partial quasi-morphisms on the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of the cotangent bundle using the spectral invariants in Lagrangian Floer homology with conormal boundary conditions, where the product compatible with the PSS isomorphism and the homological intersection product is lacking.
We give an upper bound of a Hamiltonian displacement energy of a unit disk cotangent bundle $D^*M$ in a cotangent bundle $T^*M$, when the base manifold $M$ is an open Riemannian manifold. Our main result is that the displacement energy is not greater than $C r(M)$, where $r(M)$ is the inner radius of $M$, and $C$ is a dimensional constant. As an immediate application, we study symplectic embedding problems of unit disk cotangent bundles. Moreover, combined with results in symplectic geometry, our main result shows the existence of short periodic billiard trajectories and short geodesic loops.
We consider exact Lagrangian submanifolds in cotangent bundles. Under certain additional restrictions (triviality of the fundamental group of the cotangent bundle, and of the Maslov class and second Stiefel-Whitney class of the Lagrangian submanifold) we prove such submanifolds are Floer-cohomologically indistinguishable from the zero-section. This implies strong restrictions on their topology. An essentially equivalent result was recently proved independently by Nadler, using a different approach.
It is known that any closed, exact Lagrangian in the cotangent bundle of a closed, smooth manifold is of the same homotopy type as the zero section. In this paper, we give a Fukaya-theoretic proof of this fact for the sphere and torus to review and demonstrate some of the homological algebra techniques in symplectic geometry.
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.
Our main result is the $\mathcal{C}^0$-rigidity of the area spectrum and the Maslov class of Lagrangian submanifolds. This relies on the existence of punctured pseudoholomorphic discs in cotangent bundles with boundary on the zero section, whose boundaries represent any integral homology class. We discuss further applications of these punctured discs in symplectic geometry.
We construct a Kaehler structure on the punctured cotangent bundle of the Cayley projective plane whose Kaehler form coincides with the natural symplectic form on the cotangent bundle and we show that the geodesic flow action is holomorphic and is expressed in a quite explicit form. We also give an embedding of the punctured cotangent bundle of the Cayley projective plane into the space of 8 times 8 complex matrices.
Let $N$ be a closed manifold and $U \subset T^*(N)$ a bounded domain in the cotangent bundle of $N$, containing the zero-section. A conjecture due to Viterbo asserts that the spectral metric for Lagrangian submanifolds that are exact-isotopic to the zero-section is bounded. In this paper we establish an upper bound on the spectral distance between two such Lagrangians $L_0, L_1$, which depends linearly on the boundary depth of the Floer complexes of $(L_0, F)$ and $(L_1, F)$, where $F$ is a fiber of the cotangent bundle.
In 1998, Gompf described a Stein domain structure on the disk cotangent bundle of any closed surface S, by a Legendrian handlebody diagram. We prove that Gompf's Stein domain is symplectomorphic to the disk cotangent bundle equipped with its canonical symplectic structure and the boundary of this domain is contactomorphic to the unit cotangent bundle of S equipped with its canonical contact structure. As a corollary, we obtain a surgery diagram for the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of S.
We prove a Chekanov-type theorem for the spherization of the cotangent bundle $ST^*B$ of a closed manifold $B$. It claims that for Legendrian submanifolds in $ST^*B$ the property "to be given by a generating family quadratic at infinity" persists under Legendrian isotopies.
This paper is concerned with the existence of periodic orbits on energy hypersurfaces in cotangent bundles of Riemannian manifolds defined by mechanical Hamiltonians. In \cite{bpv} it was proved that, provided certain geometric assumptions are satisfied, regular mechanical hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$, in particular non-compact ones, contain periodic orbits if one homology group among the top half does not vanish. In the present paper we extend the above mentioned existence result to a class of hypersurfaces in cotangent bundles of Riemannian manifolds with flat ends.
This encyclopedia article briefly reviews without proofs some of the main results in cotangent bundle reduction. The article recalls most the necessary prerequisites to understand the main results.
We construct some lift of an almost complex structure to the cotangent bundle, using a connection on the base manifold. This generalizes the complete lift defined by I.Sato and the horizontal lift introduced by K.Yano and S.Ishihara. We study some geometric properties of this lift and its compatibility with symplectic forms on the cotangent bundle.
Let $V$ be a bounded domain with smooth boundary in $\R^n$, and $D^*V$ denote its disc cotangent bundle. We compute symplectic homology of $D^*V$, in terms of relative homology of loop spaces on the closure of $V$. We use this result to show that Floer-Hofer capacity of $D^*V$ is between $2r(V)$ and $2(n+1)r(V)$, where $r(V)$ denotes inradius of $V$. As an application, we study periodic billiard trajectories on $V$.
We prove that any minimal weak symplectic filling of the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of a nonorientable closed surface other than the real projective plane is s-cobordant rel boundary to the disk cotangent bundle of the surface. If the nonorientable surface is the Klein bottle, then we show that the minimal weak symplectic filling is unique up to homeomorphism.
We describe a Lefschetz fibration of genus one on the disk cotangent bundle of any closed orientable surface S. As a corollary, we obtain an explicit genus one open book decomposition adapted to the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of S.
Let G be compact Lie group. It is shown that the cotangent bundle of the complexification of G admits a hyperkahler structure which is invariant under left and right translations by elements of G. The proof is to realize the cotangent bundle of the complex group as a moduli space of solutions to Nahm's equations on the closed interval.
In this paper, we compute the embedded contact homology (ECH) capacities of the disk cotangent bundles $D^*S^2$ and $D^*\mathbb{R} P^2$. We also find sharp symplectic embeddings into these domains. In particular, we compute their Gromov widths. In order to do that, we explicitly calculate the ECH chain complexes of $S^*S^2$ and $S^* \mathbb{R} P^2$ using a direct limit argument on the action inspired by Bourgeois's Morse-Bott approach and ideas from Nelson-Weiler's work on the ECH of prequantization bundles. Moreover, we use integrable systems techniques to find explicit symplectic embeddings.…
We prove that the pair-of-pants product on the Floer homology of the cotangent bundle of a compact manifold M corresponds to the Chas-Sullivan loop product on the singular homology of the loop space of M. We also prove related results concerning the Floer homological interpretation of the Pontrjagin product and of the Serre fibration. The techniques include a Fredholm theory for Cauchy-Riemann operators with jumping Lagrangian boundary conditions of conormal type, and a new cobordism argument replacing the standard gluing technique.
Cartan's moving frames method is a standard tool in riemannian geometry. We set up the machinery for applying moving frames to cotangent bundles and its sub-bundles defined by non-holonomic constraints.
We study the topology of exact and Stein fillings of the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of a closed surface $Σ_g$, where $g$ is at least 2. In particular, we prove a uniqueness theorem asserting that any Stein filling must be s-cobordant rel boundary to the disk cotangent bundle of $Σ_g$. For exact fillings, we show that the rational homology agrees with that of the disk cotangent bundle, and that the integral homology takes on finitely many possible values: for example, if $g-1$ is square-free, then any exact filling has the same integral homology and intersection fo…
We describe how the result in [1] extends to prove the existence of a Serre type spectral sequence converging to the symplectic homology SH_*(M) of an exact Sub-Liouville domain M in a cotangent bundle T*N. We will define a notion of a fiber-wise symplectic homology SH_*(M,q) for each point q in N, which will define a graded local coefficient system on N. The spectral sequence will then have page two isomorphic to the homology of N with coefficients in this graded local system.
Consider the cotangent bundle of a closed Riemannian manifold and an almost complex structure close to the one induced by the Riemannian metric. For Hamiltonians which grow for instance quadratically in the fibers outside of a compact set, one can define Floer homology and show that it is naturally isomorphic to singular homology of the free loop space. We review the three isomorphisms constructed by Viterbo (1996), Salamon-Weber (2003) and Abbondandolo-Schwarz (2004). The theory is illustrated by calculating Morse and Floer homology in case of the euclidean n-torus. Applications include exist…
We prove that on the twisted cotangent bundle of a closed manifold with an exact magnetic form, a Hamiltonian system of a time-dependent Tonelli Hamiltonian function possesses infinitely many brake orbits. More precisely, by applying Legendre transform we show that there are infinitely many symmetric orbits of the dual Euler-Lagrange system on the configuration space. This result contains an assertion for the existence of infinitely many symmetric orbits of Tonelli Euler-Lagrange systems given by G. Lu at the end of [Lu09a, Remark 6.1]. In this paper, we will present a complete proof of this a…
We examine the structure of the cotangent bundle $T^{*}X$ of an algebraic variety $X$ acted on by a reductive group $G$ from the viewpoint of equivariant symplectic geometry. In particular, we construct an equivariant symplectic covering of $T^{*}X$ by the cotangent bundle of a certain variety of horospheres in $X$, and integrate the invariant collective motion on $T^{*}X$. These results are based on a "local structure theorem" describing the action of a certain parabolic in $G$ on an open subset of $X$, which is interesting by itself.
In a previous article, we introduced a reduction procedure for locally conformally symplectic manifolds at any regular value of the momentum mapping. We use this construction to prove an analogue of a well-known theorem in the symplectic setting about the reduction of cotangent bundles.
This paper is essentially made of the three preprints arXiv:1212.5818, arXiv:1311.0187, arXiv:1603.07876 gathered in a single text, with simplified proofs. We recall several results of the microlocal theory of sheaves of Kashiwara-Schapira and apply them to study the symplectic geometry of cotangent bundles. We explain how we can recover the Gromov nonsqueezing theorem, the Gromov-Eliashberg rigidity theorem, the existence of graph selectors, we prove a three cusps conjecture about curves on the sphere and we recover more recent results on the topology of exact Lagrangian submanifolds of cotan…
This article concerns cotangent-lifted Lie group actions; our goal is to find local and ``semi-global'' normal forms for these and associated structures. Our main result is a constructive cotangent bundle slice theorem that extends the Hamiltonian slice theorem of Marle, Guillemin and Sternberg. The result applies to all proper cotangent-lifted actions, around points with fully-isotropic momentum values. We also present a ``tangent-level'' commuting reduction result and use it to characterise the symplectic normal space of any cotangent-lifted action. In two special cases, we arrive at splitti…
