This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we use symplectic homology to distinguish the contact structures on the Brieskorn manifolds $Σ(2l,2,2,2)$, which contact homology cannot distinguish. This answers a question from [22].
In the second part, we prove the existence of infinitely many exotic but homotopically trivial exotic contact structures on $S^7$, distinguished by the mean Euler characteristic of $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology. Apart from various connected sum constructions, these contact structures can be taken from the Brieskorn manifolds $Σ(78k+1,13,6,3,3)$. We end with some considerations about extending this result to higher dimensions.
We give an algorithm for computing the contact homology of some Brieskorn manifolds. As an application, we construct infinitely many contact structures on the class of simply connected contact manifolds that admit nice contact forms (i.e. no Reeb orbits of degree -1,0 or 1) and have index positivity with trivial first Chern class.
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…
Cylindrical contact homology is a comparatively simple incarnation of symplectic field theory whose existence and invariance under suitable hypotheses was recently established by Hutchings and Nelson. We study this invariant for a general Brieskorn 3-manifold $Σ(a_1,\ldots, a_n)$, and give a complete description of the cylindrical contact homology for this 3-manifold equipped with its natural contact structure, for any $a_j$ satisfying $\frac{1}{a_1} + \cdots + \frac{1}{a_n} < n-2$.
We introduce the concept of $k$-(semi)-dilation for Liouville domains, which is a generalization of symplectic dilation defined by Seidel-Solomon. We prove that the existence of $k$-(semi)-dilation is a property independent of fillings for asymptotically dynamically convex (ADC) manifolds. We construct examples with $k$-dilations, but not $k-1$-dilations for all $k\ge 0$. We extract invariants taking value in $\mathbb{N} \cup \{\infty\}$ for Liouville domains and ADC contact manifolds, which are called the order of (semi)-dilation. The order of (semi)-dilation serves as embedding and cobordism…
Using $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology, in particular its mean Euler characteristic, of the natural filling of links of Brieskorn-Pham polynomials, we prove the existence of infinitely many inequivalent contact structures on various manifolds, including in dimension 5 the k-fold connected sums of $S^2\times S^3$ and certain rational homology spheres. We then apply our result to show that on these manifolds the moduli space of classes of positive Sasakian structures has infinitely many components. We also apply our results to give lower bounds on the number of components of the moduli spac…
For any nonempty, compact and fiberwise convex set $K$ in $T^*\mathbb{R}^n$, we prove an isomorphism between symplectic homology of $K$ and a certain relative homology of loop spaces of $\mathbb{R}^n$. We also prove a formula which computes symplectic homology capacity (which is a symplectic capacity defined from symplectic homology) of $K$ using homology of loop spaces. As applications, we prove (i) symplectic homology capacity of any convex body is equal to its Ekeland-Hofer-Zehnder capacity, (ii) a certain subadditivity property of the Hofer-Zehnder capacity, which is a generalization of a …
In this paper we prove two isomorphisms in the local symplectic homology of a simple, which is to say non iterated, isolated Reeb orbit. The isomorphisms are in $S^1$-equivariant and nonequivariant symplectic homology, relating the local Floer homology group of the orbit to that of the return map. The isomorphism we prove in $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology can be stated succinctly as the local $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology of a simple isolated Reeb orbit is isomorphic to the local Hamiltonian Floer homology of the return map. We also prove the equivalence of two different definit…
In this survey, we give an overview of Brieskorn manifolds and varieties, and their role in contact topology. We discuss open books, fillings and invariants such as contact and symplectic homology. We also present some new results involving exotic contact structures, invariants and orderability. The main tool for the required computations is a version of the Morse-Bott spectral sequence. We provide a proof for the particular version that is useful for us.
This research announcement continues the study of the symplectic homology of Weinstein manifolds undertaken in [BEE1] where the symplectic homology, as a vector space, was expressed in terms of the Legendrian homology algebra of the attaching spheres of critical handles. Here we express the product and $\BV$-operator of symplectic homology in that context.
Like (co)homology group theory of formal Hamiltonian vector fields on symplectic vector spaces, we try studying homology group theory on symplecit tori introducing the notion of weight.
We construct a spectral sequence converging to symplectic homology of a Lefschetz fibration whose E1 page is related to Floer homology of the monodromy symplectomorphism and its iterates. We use this to show the existence of fixed points of certain symplectomorphisms.
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 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…
In this note we prove that a positive multiple of each even-dimensional integral homology class of a compact symplectic manifold $(M^{2n}, ω)$ can be represented as the difference of the fundamental classes of two symplectic submanifolds in $(M^{2n}, ω)$. We also discuss the realizability of integral homology classes by symplectic surfaces in $(M^{2n}, ω)$.
We show that for each k > 3 there are infinitely many finite type Stein manifolds diffeomorphic to Euclidean space R^{2k} which are pairwise distinct as symplectic manifolds.
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…
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.
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 study the space of pseudo-holomorphic spheres in compact symplectic manifolds with convex boundary. We show that the theory of Gromov-Witten invariants can be extended to the class of semi-positive manifolds with convex boundary. This leads to a deformation of intersection products on the absolute and relative singular homologies. As a result, absolute and relative quantum homology algebras are defined analogously to the case of closed symplectic manifolds. In addition, we prove the Poincaré-Lefschetz duality for the absolute and relative quantum homology algebras.
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.
If $(X, ω)$ is a symplectic manifold, and $Σ$ is a smooth symplectic submanifold Poincaré dual to a positive multiple of $ω$, $X \setminus Σ$ admits a compactification as a Liouville domain, which we then complete to $(W, dλ)$. Under monotonicity assumptions on $X$ and on $Σ$, we construct a chain complex whose homology computes the Symplectic Homology of $W$. We show the differential is given in terms of Morse contributions, terms computed from Gromov-Witten invariants of $X$ relative to $Σ$ and terms computed from the Gromov-Witten invariants of $Σ$. We use a Morse-Bott model for symplectic …
In this note we prove that the symplectic homology of a Liouville domain W displaceable in the symplectic completion vanishes. Nevertheless if the Euler characteristic of (W,\p W) is odd, the filtered symplectic homologies of W do not vanish and give rise to leafwise intersection points on the symplectic completion of W for a perturbation displacing $W$ from itself. In contrast to the existing results we can find a leafwise intersection point for a given period but its energy varies by period instead.
The purpose of this paper is to give a survey of the various versions of Floer homology for manifolds with contact type boundary that have so far appeared in the literature. Under the name of ``Symplectic homology'' or ``Floer homology for manifolds with boundary'' they bear in fact common features and we shall try to underline the principles that unite them. Once this will be accomplished we shall proceed to describe the peculiarity of each of the constructions and the specific applications that unfold out of it: classification of ellipsoids and polydiscs in $\CC^n$, stability of the action s…
In the setting of symplectic manifolds which are convex at infinity, we use a version of the Aleksandrov maximum principle to derive uniform estimates for Floer solutions that are valid for a wider class of Hamiltonians and almost complex structures than is usually considered. This allows us to extend the class of Hamiltonians which one can use in the direct limit when constructing symplectic homology. As an application, we detect elements of infinite order in the symplectic mapping class group of a Liouville domain, and obtain existence results for translated points.
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 show how to compute the Lagrangian Floer homology in the one-point blow up of the proper transform of Lagrangians submanifolds, solely in terms of information of the base manifold. As an example we present an alternative computation of the Lagrangian quantum homology in the one-point blow up of (CP^2,ω) of the proper transform of the Clifford torus.
We define Floer homology for a time-independent, or autonomous Hamiltonian on a symplectic manifold with contact type boundary, under the assumption that its 1-periodic orbits are transversally nondegenerate. Our construction is based on Morse-Bott techniques for Floer trajectories. Our main motivation is to understand the relationship between linearized contact homology of a fillable contact manifold and symplectic homology of its filling.
We study the existence of multiple closed Reeb orbits on some contact manifolds by means of $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology and the index iteration formula. It is proved that a certain class of contact manifolds which admit displaceable exact contact embeddings, a certain class of prequantization bundles, and Brieskorn spheres have multiple closed Reeb orbits.
Lalonde and McDuff showed that the natural action of the rational homology of the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of a closed symplectic manifold $(M, ω)$ on the rational homology groups $H_*(M,{\mathbb Q})$ is trivial. In this note, given a symplectic action of SU(2), $ϕ:SU(2)\times M \to M$, we will construct a symplectic fiber bundle $P_ϕ\to {\mathbb CP}^2$ with fiber $(M,ω)$ and use it to construct the chains, which bound the images of the homology cycles under the trace map given by the SU(2)-action. It turns out that the natural chains bounded by the SU(2)-orbits in $M$ are puncture…
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.
The main result asserts the existence of noncontractible periodic orbits for compactly supported time dependent Hamiltonian systems on the unit cotangent bundle of the torus or of a negatively curved manifold whenever the generating Hamiltonian is sufficiently large over the zero section. The proof is based on Floer homology and on the notion of a relative symplectic capacity. Applications include results about propagation properties of sequential Hamiltonian systems, periodic orbits on hypersurfaces, Hamiltonian circle actions, and smooth Lagrangian skeletons in Stein manifolds.
A symplectic manifold $W$ with contact type boundary $M = \partial W$ induces a linearization of the contact homology of $M$ with corresponding linearized contact homology $HC(M)$. We establish a Gysin-type exact sequence in which the symplectic homology $SH(W)$ of $W$ maps to $HC(M)$, which in turn maps to $HC(M)$, by a map of degree -2, which then maps to $SH(W)$. Furthermore, we give a description of the degree -2 map in terms of rational holomorphic curves with constrained asymptotic markers, in the symplectization of $M$.
We construct absolute and relative versions of Hamiltonian Floer homology algebras for strongly semi-positive compact symplectic manifolds with convex boundary, where the ring structures are given by the appropriate versions of the pair-of-pants products. We establish the absolute and relative Piunikhin-Salamon-Schwarz isomorphisms between these Floer homology algebras and the corresponding absolute and relative quantum homology algebras. As a result, the absolute and relative analogues of the spectral invariants on the group of compactly supported Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms are defined.
We correct a mistake regarding almost complex structures on Hilbert schemes of points in surfaces in arXiv:1510.02449. The error does not affect the main results of the paper, and only affects the proofs of invariance of equivariant symplectic Khovanov homology and reduced symplectic Khovanov homology. We give an alternate proof of the invariance of equivariant symplectic Khovanov homology.
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 show that positive $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology is a contact invariant for a subclass of contact manifolds which are boundaries of Liouville domains. In nice cases, when the set of Conley-Zehnder indices of all good periodic Reeb orbits on the boundary of the Liouville domain is lacunary, the positive $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology can be computed; it is generated by those orbits. We prove a "Viterbo functoriality" property: when one Liouville domain is embedded into an other one, there is a morphism (reversing arrows) between their positive $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homo…
For each n greater than 7 we explicitly construct a sequence of Stein manifolds diffeomorphic to complex affine space of dimension n so that there is no algorithm to tell us in general whether a given such Stein manifold is symplectomorphic to the first one or not. We prove a similar undecidability result for contact structures on the 2n - 1 dimensional sphere. We can generalize these results by replacing com- plex affine space with any smooth affine variety of dimension n and the 2n - 1 dimensional sphere with any smooth affine variety intersected with a sufficiently large sphere. We prove th…
For any asymptotically dynamically convex contact manifold $Y$, we show that $SH_*(W)=0$ is a property independent of the choice of topologically simple (i.e.\ $c_1(W)=0$ and $π_{1}(Y)\rightarrow π_1(W)$ is injective) Liouville filling $W$. In particular, if $Y$ is the boundary of a flexible Weinstein domain, then any topologically simple Liouville filling $W$ has vanishing symplectic homology. As a consequence, we answer a question of Lazarev partially: a contact manifold $Y$ admitting flexible fillings determines the integral cohomology of all the topologically simple Liouville fillings of $…
We define Hamiltonian simplex differential graded algebras (DGA) with differentials that deform the high energy symplectic homology differential and wrapped Floer homology differential in the cases of closed and open strings in a Weinstein manifold, respectively. The order $m$ term in the differential is induced by varying natural degree $m$ co-products over an $(m-1)$-simplex, where the operations near the boundary of the simplex are trivial. We show that the Hamiltonian simplex DGA is quasi-isomorphic to the (non-equivariant) contact homology algebra and to the Legendrian homology algebra of…
These are (heavily revised) notes from lectures given at the AMS Algebraic Geometry meeting in Seattle, 2005. The main topic is symplectic homology seen from the point of view of Lefschetz fibrations. Most of the content is speculative, but some supporting evidence is included.
We present three equivalent definitions of $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology. We show that, using rational coefficients, the positive part of $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology is isomorphic to linearized contact homology, when the latter is defined. We present several computations and applications, and introduce a rigorously defined substitute for cylindrical/linearized contact homology based on an $S^1$-equivariant construction.
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 …
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 $HF(L_0,L_1)$.
Floer theory relates the dynamics of Hamiltonian isotopies and the homology of the ambient manifold. It was extended to similarly relate the dynamics of symplectic isotopies and the Novikov homology associated to their flux. We discuss this picture regarding the fundamental group, and prove that when the flux is not too big, the associated Novikov fundamental group is generated by Floer moduli spaces associated to closed orbits of the symplectic isotopy.
We show that a small neighborhood of a closed symplectic submanifold in a geometrically bounded aspherical symplectic manifold has non-vanishing symplectic homology. As a consequence, we establish the existence of contractible closed characteristics on any thickening of the boundary of the neighborhood. When applied to twisted geodesic flows on compact symplectically aspherical manifolds, this implies the existence of contractible periodic orbits for a dense set of low energy values.
We introduce a chain complex associated to a Liouville domain $(\overline{W}, dλ)$ whose boundary $Y$ admits a Boothby--Wang contact form (i.e. is a prequantization space). The differential counts cascades of Floer solutions in the completion $W$ of $\overline{W}$, in the spirit of Morse--Bott homology (as in work of Bourgeois, Frauenfelder arXiv:math/0309373 and Bourgeois-Oancea arXiv:0704.1039). The homology of this complex is the symplectic homology of the completion $W$. We identify a class of simple cascades and show that their moduli spaces are cut out transversely for generic choice of …
