Reeb flows with small contact volume and large return time to a global section
Murat Sağlam
备注：
16 pages. The main result in this version is a novel statement that implies the main result of the previous version. The title, the abstract and the introduction are changed in parallel to the main result of this version. The essential construction in the proof is a slight modification of the proof of the previous main result. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1806.01967
We show that any co-oriented closed contact manifold of dimension at least five admits a contact form such that the contact volume is arbitrarily small but the Reeb flow admits a global hypersurface of section with the property that the minimal period on the boundary of the hypersurface and the first return time in the interior of the hypersurface are bounded below. An immediate consequence of this statement is that every co-oriented contact structure on any closed manifold admits a contact form with arbitrarily large systolic ratio. This generalizes the result of Abbondandolo et al. in dimension three to higher dimensions. The proof the main result is inductive and uses the result of Abbondandolo et al. on large systolic ratio in dimension three in its basis step. The essential construction in the proof relies on the Giroux correspondence in higher dimensions.
We prove that every nondegenerate contact form on a closed connected three-manifold, such that the associated contact structure has torsion first Chern class, has either two or infinitely many simple Reeb orbits. By previous results it follows that under the above assumptions, there are infinitely many simple Reeb orbits if the three-manifold is not the three-sphere or a lens space. We also show that for non-torsion contact structures, every nondegenerate contact form has at least four simple Reeb orbits.
We study non-degenerate Reeb flows arising from perfect contact forms, i.e., the forms with vanishing contact homology differential. In particular, we obtain upper bounds on the number of simple closed Reeb orbits for such forms on a variety of contact manifolds and certain action-index resonance relations for the standard contact sphere. Using these results, we reprove a theorem due to Bourgeois, Cieliebak and Ekholm characterizing perfect Reeb flows on the standard contact three-sphere as non-degenerate Reeb flows with exactly two simple closed orbits.
Let $(M, ξ)$ be a compact contact 3-manifold and assume that there exists a contact form $α_0$ on $(M, ξ)$ whose Reeb flow is Anosov. We show this implies that every Reeb flow on $(M, ξ)$ has positive topological entropy. Our argument builds on previous work of the author (http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.3380) and recent work of Barthelmé and Fenley (http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.07999). This result combined with the work of Foulon and Hasselblatt (http://www.tufts.edu/as/math/Preprints/FoulonHasselblattLegendrian.pdf) is then used to obtain the first examples of hyperbolic contact 3-manifolds on which …
We construct a contact form on R^{2n+1}, n at least 2, equal to the standard contact form outside a compact set and defining the standard contact structure on all of R^{2n+1}, which has trapped Reeb orbits, including a torus invariant under the Reeb flow, but no closed Reeb orbits. This answers a question posed by Helmut Hofer.
On a 3-dimensional contact manifold with boundary, a bypass attachment is an elementary change of the contact structure consisting in the attachment of a thickened half-disc with a prescribed contact structure along an arc on the boundary. We give a model bypass attachment in which we describe the periodic orbits of the Reeb vector field created by the bypass attachment in terms of Reeb chords of the attachment arc. As an application, we compute the contact homology of a product neighbourhood of a convex surface after a bypass attachment, and the contact homology of some contact structures on …
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.
We develop a forcing theory of topological entropy for Reeb flows in dimension $3$. A transverse link $L$ in a closed contact $3$-manifold $(Y,ξ)$ is said to force topological entropy if $(Y,ξ)$ admits a Reeb flow with vanishing topological entropy, and every Reeb flow on $(Y,ξ)$ realizing $L$ as a set of periodic Reeb orbits has positive topological entropy. Our main results establish topological conditions on a transverse link $L$ which imply that $L$ forces topological entropy. These conditions are formulated in terms of two Floer theoretical invariants: the cylindrical contact homology on …
We give a uniform lower bound for the polynomial complexity of all Reeb flows on the spherization (S*M,ξ) over a closed manifold. Our measure for the dynamical complexity of Reeb flows is slow volume growth, a polynomial version of topological entropy, and our uniform bound is in terms of the polynomial growth of the homology of the based loops space of M. As an application, we extend the Bott--Samelson theorem from geodesic flows to Reeb flows: If (S*M,ξ) admits a periodic Reeb flow, or, more generally, if there exists a positive Legendrian loop of a fibre S*_q M, then M is a circle or the fu…
We show that a nondegenerate tight contact form on the 3-sphere has exactly two simple closed Reeb orbits if and only if the differential in linearized contact homology vanishes. Moreover, in this case the Floquet multipliers and Conley-Zehnder indices of the two Reeb orbits agree with those of a suitable irrational ellipsoid in 4-space.
We consider Reeb dynamics on the 3-sphere associated to a tight contact form. Our main result gives necessary and sufficient conditions for a periodic Reeb orbit to bound a disk-like global section for the Reeb flow, when the contact form is assumed to be non-degenerate.
A classical theorem due to Wadsley implies that, on a connected contact manifold all of whose Reeb orbits are closed, there is a common period for the Reeb orbits. In this paper we show that, for any Reeb flow on a closed connected 3-manifold, the following conditions are actually equivalent: (1) every Reeb orbit is closed; (2) all closed Reeb orbits have a common period; (3) the action spectrum has rank 1. We also show that, on a fixed closed connected 3-manifold, a contact form with an action spectrum of rank 1 is determined (up to pull-back by diffeomorphisms) by the set of minimal periods …
In this paper we prove the existence of infinitely many closed Reeb orbits for a certain class of contact manifolds. This result can be viewed as a contact analogue of the Hamiltonian Conley conjecture. The manifolds for which the contact Conley conjecture is established are the pre-quantization circle bundles with aspherical base. As an application, we prove that for a surface of genus at least two with a non-vanishing magnetic field, the twisted geodesic flow has infinitely many periodic orbits on every low energy level.
We show that the existence of one simple closed Reeb orbit of a particular type (a symplectically degenerate maximum) forces the Reeb flow to have infinitely many periodic orbits. We use this result to give a different proof of a recent theorem of Cristofaro-Gardiner and Hutchings asserting that every Reeb flow on the standard contact three-sphere has at least two periodic orbits. Our methods are based on adapting the machinery originally developed for proving the Hamiltonian Conley conjecture to the contact setting.
We establish a relation between the growth of the cylindrical contact homology of a contact manifold and the topological entropy of Reeb flows on this manifold. We show that if a contact manifold $(M,ξ)$ admits a hypertight contact form $λ_0$ for which the cylindrical contact homology has exponential homotopical growth rate, then the Reeb flow of every contact form on $(M,ξ)$ has positive topological entropy. Using this result, we provide numerous new examples of contact 3-manifolds on which every Reeb flow has positive topological entropy.
Let $φ$ be any flow on $T^n$ obtained as the suspension of a diffeomorphism of $T^{n-1}$ and let $\mathcal A$ be any compact invariant set of $φ$. We realize $(\mathcal A, φ|_{\mathcal A})$ up to reparametrization as an invariant set of the Reeb flow of a contact form on $\mathbb R^{2n+1}$ equal to the standard contact form outside a compact set and defining the standard contact structure on all of $\mathbb R^{2n+1}$. This generalizes the construction of Geiges, Röttgen and Zehmisch.
We prove that, for a $C^\infty$-generic contact form $λ$ adapted to a given contact distribution on a closed three-manifold, there exists a sequence of periodic Reeb orbits which is equidistributed with respect to $dλ$. This is a quantitative refinement of the $C^\infty$-generic density theorem for three-dimensional Reeb flows, which was previously proved by the author. The proof is based on the volume theorem in embedded contact homology (ECH) by Cristofaro-Gardiner, Hutchings, Ramos, and inspired by the argument of Marques-Neves-Song, who proved a similar equidistribution result for minimal …
We show that whenever a Hamiltonian diffeomorphism or a Reeb flow has a finite number of periodic orbits, the mean indices of these orbits must satisfy a resonance relation, provided that the ambient manifold meets some natural requirements. In the case of Reeb flows, this leads to simple expressions (purely in terms of the mean indices) for the mean Euler characteristics. These are invariants of the underlying contact structure which are capable of distinguishing some contact structures that are homotopic but not diffeomorphic.
These are notes based on a mini-course at the conference RIEMain in Contact, held in Cagliari, Sardinia, in June 2018. The main theme is the connection between Reeb dynamics and topology. Topics discussed include traps for Reeb flows, plugs for Hamiltonian flows, the Weinstein conjecture, Reeb flows with finite numbers of periodic orbits, and global surfaces of section for Reeb flows. The emphasis is on methods of construction, e.g. contact cuts and lifting group actions in Boothby-Wang bundles, that might be useful for other applications in contact topology.
We use Lerman's contact cut construction to find a sufficient condition for Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of compact surfaces to embed into a closed 3-manifold as Poincaré return maps on a global surface of section for a Reeb flow. In particular, we show that the irrational pseudorotations of the 2-disc constructed by Fayad-Katok embed into the Reeb flow of a dynamically convex contact form on the 3-sphere.
We provide obstructions to the existence of conformally Anosov Reeb flows on a 3-manifold that partially generalize similar obstructions to Anosov Reeb flows. In particular, we show $\mathbb{S}^3$ does not admit conformally Anosov Reeb flows. We also give a Riemannian geometric condition on a metric compatible with a contact structure implying that a Reeb field is Anosov. From this we can give curvature conditions on a metric compatible with a contact structure that implies universal tightness of the contact structure among other things.
We develop methods for studying the smooth closing lemma for Reeb flows in any dimension using contact homology. As an application, we prove a conjecture of Irie, stating that the strong closing lemma holds for Reeb flows on ellipsoids. Our methods also apply to other Reeb flows, and we illustrate this for a class of examples introduced by Albers-Geiges-Zehmisch.
A Reeb vector field satisfies the Kupka-Smale condition when all its closed orbits are non-degenerate, and the stable and unstable manifolds of its hyperbolic closed orbits intersect transversely. We show that, on a closed 3-manifold, any Reeb vector field satisfying the Kupka-Smale condition admits a Birkhoff section. In particular, this implies that the Reeb vector field of a $C^\infty$-generic contact form on a closed 3-manifold admits a Birkhoff section, and that the geodesic vector field of a $C^\infty$-generic Riemannian metric on a closed surface admits a Birkhoff section.
In this paper, we prove (1): for any closed contact three-manifold with a $C^\infty$-generic contact form, the union of periodic Reeb orbits is dense, (2): for any closed surface with a $C^\infty$-generic Riemannian metric, the union of closed geodesics is dense. The key observation is $C^\infty$-closing lemma for 3D Reeb flows, which follows from the fact that the embedded contact homology (ECH) spectral invariants recover the volume.
We show that the differential in positive equivariant symplectic homology or linearized contact homology vanishes for non-degenerate Reeb flows with a continuous invariant Lagrangian subbundle (e.g. Anosov Reeb flows). Several applications are given, including obstructions to the existence of these flows and abundance of periodic orbits for contact forms representing an Anosov contact structure.
Given an open book decomposition of a contact three man-ifold (M, $ξ$) with pseudo-Anosov monodromy and fractional Dehn twist coefficient c = k n, we construct a Legendrian knot $Λ$ close to the stable foliation of a page, together with a small Legendrian pushoff $Λ$. When k $\ge$ 5, we apply the techniques of [CH2] to show that the strip Legen-drian contact homology of $Λ$ $\rightarrow$ $Λ$ is well-defined and has an exponential growth property. The work [Al2] then implies that all Reeb vector fields for $ξ$ have positive topological entropy.
We use Hamiltonian Floer theory to recover and generalize a classic rigidity theorem of Ekelend and Lasry. That theorem can be rephrased as an assertion about the existence of multiple closed Reeb orbits for certain tight contact forms on the sphere that are close, in a suitable sense, to the standard contact form. We first generalize this result to Reeb flows of contact forms on prequantization spaces that are suitably close to Boothby-Wang forms. We then establish, under an additional nondegeneracy assumption, the same rigidity phenomenon for Reeb flows on any closed contact manifold. A natu…
We prove the non--triviality of the Reeb flow for the (2n+1)--dimensional standard contact spheres inside the fundamental group of their contactomorphism group, n greater than 3. The argument uses the existence of homotopically non--trivial 2--spheres in the space of contact structures of a 3--Sasakian manifold.
A closed contact manifold is called Besse when all its Reeb orbits are closed, and Zoll when they have the same minimal period. In this paper, we provide a characterization of Besse contact forms for convex contact spheres and Riemannian unit tangent bundles in terms of $S^1$-equivariant spectral invariants. Furthermore, for restricted contact type hypersurfaces of symplectic Euclidean spaces, we give a sufficient condition for the Besse property via the Ekeland-Hofer capacities.
In this paper we study the growth rate of a version of Legendrian contact homology, which we call strip Legendrian contact homology, in 3-dimensional contact manifolds and its relation to the topological entropy of Reeb flows. We show that: if for a pair of Legendrian knots in a contact 3-manifold $(M,ξ)$ the strip Legendrian contact homology is defined and has exponential homotopical growth with respect to the action, then every Reeb flow on $(M,ξ)$ has positive topological entropy. This has the following dynamical consequence: for all Reeb flows (even degenerate ones) on $(M,ξ)$ the number o…
For Reeb vector fields on closed 3-manifolds, cylindrical contact homology is used to show that the existence of a set of closed Reeb orbit with certain knotting/linking properties implies the existence of other Reeb orbits with other knotting/linking properties relative to the original set. We work out a few examples on the 3-sphere to illustrate the theory, and describe an application to closed geodesics on $S^2$ (a version of a result due to Angenent).
The aim of this article is to apply a Floer theory to study symmetric periodic Reeb orbits. We define positive equivariant wrapped Floer homology using a (anti-)symplectic involution on a Liouville domain and investigate its algebraic properties. By a careful analysis of index iterations, we obtain a non-trivial lower bound on the minimal number of geometrically distinct symmetric periodic Reeb orbits on a certain class of real contact manifolds. This includes non-degenerate real dynamically convex starshaped hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$ which are invariant under complex conjugation. As …
We show that every (possibly degenerate) contact form on a closed three-manifold has at least two embedded Reeb orbits. We also show that if there are only finitely many embedded Reeb orbits, then their symplectic actions are not all integer multiples of a single real number; and if there are exactly two embedded Reeb orbits, then the product of their symplectic actions is less than or equal to the contact volume of the manifold. The proofs use a relation between the contact volume and the asymptotics of the amount of symplectic action needed to represent certain classes in embedded contact ho…
We survey some results on the existence (and non-existence) of periodic Reeb orbits on contact manifolds, both in the open and closed case. We place these statements in the context of Finsler geometry by including a proof of the folklore theorem that the Finsler geodesic flow can be interpreted as a Reeb flow. As a mild extension of previous results we present existence statements on periodic Reeb orbits on contact manifolds with suitable supporting open books.
We consider a closed three-dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifold. The objective of this note is to provide a precise description of the sub-Riemannian geodesics with large initial momenta: we prove that they "spiral around the Reeb orbits", not only in the phase space but also in the configuration space. Our analysis is based on a normal form along any Reeb orbit due to Melrose.
Let Q be a Riemannian manifold such that the Betti numbers of its free loop space with respect to some coefficient field are unbounded. We show that every contact form on its unit contangent bundle supporting the natural contact structure has infinitely many simple Reeb orbits. This is an extension of a theorem by Gromoll and Meyer. We also show that if a compact manifold admits a Stein fillable contact structure then there is a possibly different such structure which also has infinitely many simple Reeb orbits for every supporting contact form. We use local Floer homology along with symplecti…
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.
In this article we extend results of Grove and Tanaka on the existence of isometry-invariant geodesics to the setting of Reeb flows and strict contactomorphisms. Specifically, we prove that if M is a closed connected manifold with the property that the Betti numbers of the free loop space are asymptotically unbounded then for every fibrewise star-shaped hypersurface in the cotangent bundle of M and every strict contactomorphism of that hypersurface which is contact-isotopic to the identity, there are infinitely many invariant Reeb orbits.
Universität Augsburg（奥格斯堡大学）；Universidad Complutense de Madrid（马德里康普顿斯大学）；Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas (CSIC-UAM-UCM-UC3M)（数学科学研究所）；Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya（加泰罗尼亚理工大学）
Given a contact 3-manifold we consider the problem of when a given function can be realized as the Ricci curvature of a Reeb vector field for the contact structure. We will use topological tools to show that every admissible function can be realized as such Ricci curvature for a singular metric which is an honest compatible metric away from a measure zero set. However, we will see that resolving such singularities depends on contact topological data and is yet to be fully understood.
Let $V$ be a closed 3-manifold with a contact form $λ$, and let $L$ be a link consisting of closed orbits for the Reeb vector field of $λ$. We study the problem of defining cylindrical contact homology on the non-compact manifold $V \backslash L$, giving sufficient conditions on a class of forms so that the chain complex can be defined in the expected way. Under further technical assumptions we show that the homology of the complex up to isomorphism is independent of choices except possibly the values of certain Conley-Zehnder indices associated with $L$. A simple example shows that the homolo…
The link of the $A_n$ singularity, $L_{A_n} \subset \mathbb{C}^3$ admits a natural contact structure $ξ_0$ coming from the set of complex tangencies. The canonical contact form $α_0$ associated to $ξ_0$ is degenerate and thus has no isolated Reeb orbits. We show that there is a nondegenerate contact form for a contact structure equivalent to $ξ_0$ that has two isolated simple periodic Reeb orbits. We compute the Conley-Zehnder index of these simple orbits and their iterates. From these calculations we compute the positive $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology groups for $\left(L_{A_n}, ξ_0 \ri…
We develop a variant of Lusternik-Schnirelmann theory for the shift operator in equivariant Floer and symplectic homology. Our key result is that the spectral invariants are strictly decreasing under the action of the shift operator when periodic orbits are isolated. As an application, we prove new multiplicity results for simple closed Reeb orbits on the standard contact sphere, the unit cotangent bundle to the sphere and some other contact manifolds. We also show that the lower Conley--Zehnder index enjoys a certain recurrence property and revisit and reprove from a different perspective a v…
The first result of this paper is that every contact form on $\mathbb{R} P^3$ sufficiently $C^\infty$-close to a dynamically convex contact form admits an elliptic-parabolic closed Reeb orbit which is $2$-unknotted, has self-linking number $-1/2$ and transverse rotation number in $(1/2,1]$. Our second result implies that any $p$-unknotted periodic orbit with self-linking number $-1/p$ of a dynamically convex Reeb flow on a lens space of order $p$ is the binding of a rational open book decomposition, whose pages are global surfaces of section. As an application we show that in the planar circul…
We prove that every non-degenerate Reeb flow on a closed contact manifold $M$ admitting a strong symplectic filling $W$ with vanishing first Chern class carries at least two geometrically distinct closed orbits provided that the positive equivariant symplectic homology of $W$ satisfies a mild condition. Under further assumptions, we establish the existence of two geometrically distinct closed orbits on any contact finite quotient of $M$. Several examples of such contact manifolds are provided, like displaceable ones, unit cosphere bundles, prequantization circle bundles, Brieskorn spheres and …
