This is a survey paper on derived symplectic geometry, that will appear as a chapter contribution to the book "New Spaces for Mathematics and Physics", edited by Mathieu Anel and Gabriel Catren.
Our goal is to explain how derived stacks can be useful for ordinary symplectic geometry, with an emphasis on examples coming from classical topological field theories. More precisely, we use classical Chern-Simons theory and moduli spaces of flat $G$-bundles and $G$-local systems as leading examples in our journey.
We start in the introduction by reviewing various point-of-views on classical Chern--Simons theory and moduli of flat connections. In the main body of the Chapter we try to convince the reader how derived symplectic geometry (after Pantev-Toën-Vaquié-Vezzosi somehow reconciles all these different point-of-views.
We discuss a symplectic counterpart of the theory of stacky fans. First, we define a stacky polytope and construct the symplectic Deligne-Mumford stack associated to the stacky polytope. Then we establish a relation between stacky polytopes and stacky fans: the stack associated to a stacky polytope is equivalent to the stack associated to a stacky fan if the stacky fan corresponds to the stacky polytope.
We give an intrinsic definition of toric symplectic stacks, and show that they are classified by simple convex polytopes equipped with some additional combinatorial data. This generalizes Delzant's classification of toric symplectic manifolds. As an application, we show that any toric symplectic stack can be deformed to an ineffective toric orbifold.
We outline a proof that the stack of symplectic toric G-manifolds over a fixed orbit space W is a torsor for the stack of symplectic toric G-principal bundles over W.
We develop differential and symplectic geometry of differentiable Deligne-Mumford stacks (orbifolds) including Hamiltonian group actions and symplectic reduction. As an application we construct new examples of symplectic toric DM stacks as symplectic quotients of C^NxBG, where G is a finite non-abelian group.
We prove that shifted cotangent stacks carry a canonical shifted symplectic structure. We also prove that shifted conormal stacks carry a canonical Lagrangian structure. These results were believed to be true but no written proof was available in the Artin case.
Toric varieties play an important role both in symplectic and complex geometry. In symplectic geometry, the construction of a symplectic toric manifold from a smooth polytope is due to Delzant. In algebraic geometry, there is a more general construction using fans rather than polytopes. However, in case the fan is induced by a smooth polytope Audin showed both constructions to give isomorphic projective varieties. For rational but not necessarily smooth polytopes the Delzant construction was refined by Lerman and Tolman, leading to symplectic toric orbifolds or more generally, symplectic toric…
We introduce and study the derived moduli stack $\mathrm{Symp}(X,n)$ of $n$-shifted symplectic structures on a given derived stack $X$, as introduced by [PTVV] (IHES Vol. 117, 2013). In particular, under reasonable assumptions on $X$, we prove that $\mathrm{Symp}(X, n)$ carries a canonical shifted quadratic form. This generalizes a classical result of Fricke and Habermann, which was established in the $C^{\infty}$-setting, to the broader context of derived algebraic geometry, thus proving a conjecture stated by Vezzosi.
On a complex symplectic manifold, we construct the stack of quantization-deformation modules, that is, (twisted) modules of microdifferential operators with an extra central parameter, a substitute to the lack of homogeneity. We also quantize involutive submanifolds of contact manifolds.
In this article, we construct a $2$-category of Lagrangians in a fixed shifted symplectic derived stack S. The objects and morphisms are all given by Lagrangians living on various fiber products. A special case of this gives a $2$-category of $n$-shifted symplectic derived stacks $Symp^n$. This is a $2$-category version of Weinstein's symplectic category in the setting of derived symplectic geometry. We introduce another $2$-category $Symp^{or}$ of $0$-shifted symplectic derived stacks where the objects and morphisms in $Symp^0$ are enhanced with orientation data. Using this, we define a parti…
We associate curves of isotropic, Lagrangian and coisotropic subspaces to higher order, one parameter variational problems. Minimality and conjugacy properties of extremals are described in terms of these curves.
We study the symplectic nature of the moduli stack classifying dormant curves over a field $K$ of positive characteristic, i.e., proper hyperbolic curves over $K$ equipped with a dormant indigenous bundle. The central objects of the present paper are the following two Deligne-Mumford stacks. One is the cotangent bundle ${^\circledcirc T^{\vee ^\mathrm{Zzz...}}_{g,K}}$ of the moduli stack ${^\circledcirc \mathfrak{M}^{^\mathrm{Zzz...}}_{g,K}}$ classifying ordinary dormant curves over $K$ of genus $g$. The other is the moduli stack ${^\circledcirc \mathfrak{S}^{^\mathrm{Zzz...}}_{g,K}}$ classify…
In the past decade there has been a flurry of activity at the intersection of spectral theory and symplectic geometry. In this paper we review recent results on semiclassical spectral theory for commuting Berezin-Toeplitz and h-pseudodifferential operators. The paper emphasizes the interplay between spectral theory of operators (quantum theory) and symplectic geometry of Hamiltonians (classical theory), with an eye towards recent developments on the geometry of finite dimensional integrable systems.
In this article we study Ammann tilings from the perspective of symplectic geometry. Ammann tilings are nonperiodic tilings that are related to quasicrystals with icosahedral symmetry. We associate to each Ammann tiling two explicitly constructed highly singular symplectic spaces and we show that they are diffeomorphic but not symplectomorphic. These spaces inherit from the tiling its very interesting symmetries.
We extend the AKSZ formulation of the Poisson sigma model to more general target spaces, and we develop the general theory of graded geometry for poly-symplectic and poly-Poisson structures. In particular we prove a Schwarz-type theorem and transgression for graded poly-symplectic structures, recovering the action functional and the poly-symplectic structure of the reduced phase space of the poly-Poisson sigma model, from the AKSZ construction.
We review the prequantization procedure in the context of super symplectic manifolds with a symplectic form which is not necessarily homogeneous. In developing the theory of non homogeneous symplectic forms, there is one surprising result: the Poisson algebra no longer is the set of smooth functions on the manifold, but a subset of functions with values in a super vector space of dimension 1|1. We show that this has no notable consequences for results concerning coadjoint orbits, momentum maps, and central extensions. Another surprising result is that prequantization in terms of complex line b…
In this paper we analyze in detail a collection of motivating examples to consider $b^m$-symplectic forms and folded-type symplectic structures. In particular, we provide models in Celestial Mechanics for every $b^m$-symplectic structure. At the end of the paper, we introduce the odd-dimensional analogue to $b$-symplectic manifolds: $b$-contact manifolds.
Making use of theory of differentiable stacks, we study symplectic vortex equations over a compact orbifold Riemann surface. We discuss the category of representable morphisms from a compact orbifold Riemann surface to a quotient stack. After that we define symplectic vortex equations over a compact orbifold Riemann surface. We also discuss the moduli space of solutions to the equations for linear actions of the circle group on the complex plane.
We study noncommutative generalizations of such notions of the classical symplectic geometry as degenerate Poisson structure, Poisson submanifold and quotient manifold, symplectic foliation and symplectic leaf for associative Poisson algebras. We consider these structures for the case of the endomorphism algebra of a vector bundle, and give the full description of the family of Poisson structures for this algebra.
We discuss a quantum counterpart, in the sense of the Berezin-Toeplitz quantization, of certain constraints on Poisson brackets coming from "hard" symplectic geometry. It turns out that they can be interpreted in terms of the quantum noise of observables and their joint measurements in operational quantum mechanics. Our findings include various geometric mechanisms of quantum noise production and a noise-localization uncertainty relation. The methods involve Floer theory and Poisson bracket invariants originated in function theory on symplectic manifolds.
The purpose of this article is to view Penrose rhombus tilings from the perspective of symplectic geometry. We show that each thick rhombus in such a tiling can be naturally associated to a highly singular 4-dimensional compact symplectic space, while each thin rhombus can be associated to another such space; both spaces are invariant under the Hamiltonian action of a 2-dimensional quasitorus, and the images of the corresponding moment mappings give the rhombuses back. These two spaces are diffeomorphic but not symplectomorphic.
In this paper we study the symplectic and Poisson geometry of moduli spaces of flat connections over quilted surfaces. These are surfaces where the structure group varies from region to region in the surface, and where a reduction (or relation) of structure occurs along the boundaries of the regions. Our main theoretical tool is a new form moment-map reduction in the context of Dirac geometry. This reduction framework allows us to use very general relations of structure groups, and to investigate both the symplectic and Poisson geometry of the resulting moduli spaces from a unified perspective…
We consider the $osp(1|2)$-invariant bilinear operations on weighted densities on the supercircle $S^{1|1}$ called the supertransvectants. These operations are analogues of the famous Gordan transvectants (or Rankin-Cohen brackets). We prove that these operations coincide with the iterated Poisson and ghost Poisson brackets on ${\mathbb R}^{2|1}$ and apply this result to construct star-products involving the supertransvectants.
This is an overview article on selected topics in symplectic geometry written for the Handbook of Differential Geometry (volume 2, edited by F.J.E. Dillen and L.C.A. Verstraelen).
Several geometric flows on symplectic manifolds are introduced which are potentially of interest in symplectic geometry and topology. They are motivated by the Type IIA flow and T-duality between flows in symplectic geometry and flows in complex geometry. Examples include the Hitchin gradient flow on symplectic manifolds, and a new flow which is called the dual Ricci flow.
The paper concerns a $C^0$-rigidity result for the charcteristic foliations in symplectic geometry. A symplectic homeomorphism (in the sense of Eliashberg-Gromov) which preserves a smooth hypersurface also preserves its characteristic foliation.
We extend the ``Extension after Restriction Principle'' for symplectic embeddings of bounded starlike domains to a large class of symplectic embeddings of unbounded starlike domains.
We study coisotropic submanifolds of $b$-symplectic manifolds. We prove that $b$-coisotropic submanifolds (those transverse to the degeneracy locus) determine the $b$-symplectic structure in a neighborhood, and provide a normal form theorem. This extends Gotay's theorem in symplectic geometry. Further, we introduce strong $b$-coisotropic submanifolds and show that their coisotropic quotient, which locally is always smooth, inherits a reduced $b$-symplectic structure.
We will survey some aspects of the smooth topology, algebraic geometry, symplectic geometry and contact geometry of anti-canonical pairs in complex dimension two.
In this paper, we gave some explicit relations between absolute and relative Gromov-Witten invariants. We proved that a symplectic manifold is symplectic rationally connected if it contains a positive divisor symplectomorphic to $P^n$.
We prove that the information geometry's Frobenius manifold is a symplectic manifold having Poisson structures. By proving this statement, a bridge is created between the theories developed by Vinberg, Souriau and Koszul and the Frobenius manifold approach. Until now these approaches seemed disconnected.
In this work we define a relative version of the flux homomorphism, introduced by Calabi in 1969, for a symplectic manifold. We use it to study (the universal cover of) the group of symplectomorphisms of a symplectic manifold leaving a Lagrangian submanifold invariant. We show that some quotients of this group are stable under symplectic reduction.
In this paper we survey some recent works that take the first steps toward establishing bilateral connections between symplectic geometry and several other fields, namely, asymptotic geometric analysis, classical convex geometry, and the theory of normed spaces.
Sheaf theoretically based Abstract Differential Geometry incorporates and generalizes all the classical differential geometry. Here, we undertake to partially explore the implications of Abstract Differential Geometry to classical symplectic geometry. The full investigation will be presented elsewhere.
In this paper we survey several intersection and non-intersection phenomena appearing in the realm of symplectic topology. We discuss their implications and finally outline some new relations of the subject to algebraic geometry.
We prove a quantitative $h$-principle statement for subcritical isotropic embeddings. As an application, we construct a symplectic homeomorphism that takes a symplectic disc into an isotropic one in dimension at least $6$.
This paper studies the action of symplectic homeomorphisms on smooth submanifolds, with a main focus on the behaviour of symplectic homeomorphisms with respect to numerical invariants like capacities. Our main result is that a symplectic homeomorphism may preserve and squeeze codimension $4$ symplectic submanifolds ($C^0$-flexibility), while this is impossible for codimension $2$ symplectic submanifolds ($C^0$-rigidity). We also discuss $C^0$-invariants of coistropic and Lagrangian submanifolds, proving some rigidity results and formulating some conjectures. We finally formulate an Eliashberg-…
We study the geometry of manifolds carrying symplectic pairs consisting of two closed 2-forms of constant ranks, whose kernel foliations are complementary. Using a variation of the construction of Boothby and Wang we build contact-symplectic and contact pairs from symplectic pairs.
Recently in symplectic geometry there arose an interest in bounding various functionals on spaces of matrices. It appears that Grothendieck's theorems about factorization are a useful tool for proving such bounds. In this note we present two such applications.
This note collects a number of standard statements in Riemannian geometry and in Sobolev-space theory that play a prominent role in analytic approaches to symplectic topology. These include relations between connections and complex structures, estimates on exponential-like maps, and dependence of constants in Sobolev and elliptic estimates.
We uncover the lowest order differential invariants of Lagrangian submanifolds under affine symplectic maps, and find out what happens when they are constant.
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…
The purpose of this note is to make some connection between the sub-Riemannian geometry on Carnot-Caratheodory groups and symplectic geometry. We shall concentrate here on the Heisenberg group, although it is transparent that almost everything can be done on a general Carnot-Caratheodory group. Such generalisations will be the subject of a forthcoming note.
Our paper develops a theory of Poisson slices and a uniform approach to their partial compactifications. The theory in question is loosely comparable to that of symplectic cross-sections in real symplectic geometry.
