We study symplectic rigidity phenomena for fibers in cotangent bundles of Riemann surfaces. Our main result can be seen as a generalization to open Riemann surfaces of arbitrary genus of work of Eliashberg and Polterovich on the Nearby Lagrangian Conjecture for $T^* \mathbb{R}^2$. As a corollary, we answer a strong version in dimension $2n=4$ of a question of Eliashberg about linking of Lagrangian disks in $T^* \mathbb{R}^n$, which was previously answered by Ekholm and Smith in dimensions $2n \geq 8$.
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 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.
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 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.
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.…
In this article we generalize a theorem by Palais on the rigidity of compact group actions to cotangent lifts. We use this result to prove rigidity for integrable systems on symplectic manifolds including sytems with degenerate singularities which are invariant under a torus action.
We prove that symplectic cohomology for open convex symplectic manifolds is invariant when the symplectic form undergoes deformations which may be non-exact and non-compactly supported, provided one uses the correct local system of coefficients in Floer theory. As a sample application beyond the Liouville setup, we describe in detail the symplectic cohomology for disc bundles in the twisted cotangent bundle of surfaces, and we deduce existence results for periodic magnetic geodesics on surfaces. In particular, we show the existence of geometrically distinct orbits by exploiting properties of t…
We construct open symplectic manifolds which are convex at infinity ("Liouville manifolds") and which are diffeomorphic, but not symplectically isomorphic, to cotangent bundles T^*S^{n+1}, for any n+1 \geq 3. These manifolds are constructed as total spaces of Lefschetz fibrations, where the fibre and all but one of the vanishing cycles are fixed. We show that almost any choice of the last vanishing cycle leads to a nonstandard symplectic structure (those choices which yield standard T^*S^{n+1} can be exactly determined). The Corrigendum changes the statement and proof of Lemma 1.1 in the origi…
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.
For a closed connected manifold N, we construct a family of functions on the Hamiltonian group G of the cotangent bundle T^*N, and a family of functions on the space of smooth functions with compact support on T^*N. These satisfy properties analogous to those of partial quasi-morphisms and quasi-states of Entov and Polterovich. The families are parametrized by the first real cohomology of N. In the case N=T^n the family of functions on G coincides with Viterbo's symplectic homogenization operator. These functions have applications to the algebraic and geometric structure of G, to Aubry-Mather …
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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 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.
We show that, for any two orientable smooth open 4-manifolds $X_0,X_1$ which are homeomorphic, their cotangent bundles $T^*X_0,T^*X_1$ are symplectomorphic with their canonical symplectic structure. In particular, for any smooth manifold $R$ homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^4$, the standard Stein structure on $T^*R$ is Stein homotopic to the standard Stein structure on $T^*\mathbb{R}^4 = \mathbb{R}^8$. We use this to show that any exotic $\mathbb{R}^4$ embeds in the standard symplectic $\mathbb{R}^8$ as a Lagrangian submanifold. As a corollary, we show that $\mathbb{R}^8$ has uncountably many smoot…
An alternative proof of Eliashberg-Gromov's C^0-rigidity theorem is presented and a new notion of weak Lie brackets for Hamiltonian vector fields is proposed and compared.
We describe various approaches to understanding Fukaya categories of cotangent bundles. All of the approaches rely on introducing a suitable class of noncompact Lagrangian submanifolds. We review the work of Nadler-Zaslow (math/0604379, math/0612399) and the authors (math/0701783), before discussing a new approach using family Floer cohomology and the ``wrapped Fukaya category''. The latter, inspired by Viterbo's symplectic homology, emphasises the connection to loop spaces, hence seems particularly suitable when trying to extend the existing theory beyond the simply-connected case.
This paper deals with the ${\mathcal C}^0$-rigidity of the reduction of coiostropic submanifolds under the action of symplectic homeomorphism. More precisely, we exhibit several situations where a symplectic homeomorphism that takes a coisotropic submanifold to a smooth submanifold (which are then known to be coisotropic by a result of Humilière-Leclercq-Seyfaddini) abides to the non-squeezing property in the reduction.
In this paper we construct, in all odd complex dimensions, pairs of Liouville domains W_0 and W_1 which are diffeomorphic to the cotangent bundle of the sphere with one extra subcritical handle, but are not symplectomorphic. While W_0 is symplectically very similar to the cotangent bundle itself, W_1 is more unusual. We use Seidel's exact triangles for Floer cohomology to show that the wrapped Fukaya category of W_1 is trivial. As a corollary we obtain that W_1 contains no compact exact Lagrangian submanifolds.
In this paper we study whether symplectic toric manifolds are symplectically cohomologically rigid. Here we say that symplectic cohomological rigidity holds for some family of symplectic manifolds if the members of that family can be distinguished by their integral cohomology rings and the cohomology classes of their symplectic forms. We show how toric degenerations can be used to produce the symplectomorphisms necessary to answer this question. As a consequence we prove that symplectic cohomological rigidity holds for the family of symplectic Bott manifolds with rational symplectic form whose…
We introduce the concept of Hofer-Zehnder $G$-semicapacity (or $G$-sensitive Hofer-Zehnder capacity) and prove that given a geometrically bounded symplectic manifold $(M,ω)$ and an open subset $N \subset M$ endowed with a Hamiltonian free circle action $ϕ$ then $N$ has bounded Hofer-Zehnder $G_ϕ$-semicapacity, where $G_ϕ\subset π_1(N)$ is the subgroup generated by the homotopy class of the orbits of $ϕ$. In particular, $N$ has bounded Hofer-Zehnder capacity. We give two types of applications of the main result. Firstly, we prove that the cotangent bundle of a compact manifold endowed with a fr…
This article uses relative symplectic cohomology, recently studied by the second author, to understand rigidity phenomena for compact subsets of symplectic manifolds. As an application, we consider a symplectic crossings divisor in a Calabi-Yau symplectic manifold $M$ whose complement is a Liouville manifold. We show that, for a carefully chosen Liouville structure, the skeleton as a subset of $M$ exhibits strong rigidity properties akin to super-heavy subsets of Entov-Polterovich. Along the way, we expand the toolkit of relative symplectic cohomology by introducing products and units. We also…
We prove a theorem on singular symplectic cotangent bundle reduction in the Fréchet setting and apply it to Yang-Mills-Higgs theory with special emphasis on the Higgs sector of the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam model. For the latter model we give a detailed description of the reduced phase space and show that the singular structure is encoded in a finite-dimensional Lie group action.
An embedding $φ\colon (M_1, ω_1) \to (M_2, ω_2)$ (of symplectic manifolds of the same dimension) is called $ε$-symplectic if the difference $φ^* ω_2 - ω_1$ is $ε$-small with respect to a fixed Riemannian metric on $M_1$. We prove that if a sequence of $ε$-symplectic embeddings converges uniformly (on compact subsets) to another embedding, then the limit is $E$-symplectic, where the number $E$ depends only on $ε$ and $E (ε) \to 0$ as $ε\to 0$. This generalizes $C^0$-rigidity of symplectic embeddings, and answers a question in topological quantum computing by Michael Freedman. As in the symplect…
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 revisit the definition of the Maslov index of loops in coisotropic submanifolds tangent to the characteristic foliation of this submanifold. This Maslov index is given by the mean index of a certain symplectic path which is a lift of the holonomy along the loop. We prove a result on the rigidity of the Maslov index for stable coisotropic submanifolds in a broad class of ambient symplectic manifolds. Furthermore, we establish a nearby existence theorem for the same class of ambient manifolds.
We consider the problem of cotangent bundle reduction for non free group actions at zero momentum. We show that in this context the symplectic stratification obtained by Sjamaar and Lerman refines in two ways: (i) each symplectic stratum admits a stratification which we call the secondary stratification with two distinct types of pieces, one of which is open and dense and symplectomorphic to a cotangent bundle; (ii) the reduced space at zero momentum admits a finer stratification than the symplectic one into pieces that are coisotropic in their respective symplectic strata.
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 families of monotone symplectic manifolds constructed via the symplectic cutting procedure of Lerman from the cotangent bundle of manifolds endowed with a free circle action. We also give obstructions to the monotone Lagrangian embedding of some compact manifolds in these symplectic manifolds.
We prove a version of the Arnol'd conjecture for Lagrangian submanifolds of conformal symplectic manifolds: a Lagrangian $L$ which has non-zero Morse-Novikov homology for the restriction of the Lee form $β$ cannot be disjoined from itself by a $C^0$-small Hamiltonian isotopy. Furthermore for generic such isotopies the number of intersection points equals at least the sum of the free Betti numbers of the Morse-Novikov homology of $β$. We also give a short exposition of conformal symplectic geometry, aimed at readers who are familiar with (standard) symplectic or contact geometry.
We introduce the notion of a point on a locally closed subset of a symplectic manifold being "locally rigid" with respect to that subset, prove that this notion is invariant under symplectic homeomorphisms, and show that coisotropic submanifolds are distinguished among all smooth submanifolds by the property that all of their points are locally rigid. This yields a simplified proof of the Humilière-Leclercq-Seyfaddini theorem on the $C^0$-rigidity of coisotropic submanifolds. Connections are also made to the "rigid locus" that has previously been used in the study of Chekanov-Hofer pseudometri…
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…
We present a novel $C^0$-characterization of symplectic embeddings and diffeomorphisms in terms of Lagrangian embeddings. Our approach is based on the shape invariant, which was discovered by J.-C. Sikorav and Y. Eliashberg, intersection theory and the displacement energy of Lagrangian submanifolds, and the fact that non-Lagrangian submanifolds can be displaced immediately. This characterization gives rise to a new proof of $C^0$-rigidity of symplectic embeddings and diffeomorphisms. The various manifestations of Lagrangian rigidity that are used in our arguments come from $J$-holomorphic curv…
We prove that symplectic homeomorphisms, in the sense of the celebrated Gromov-Eliashberg Theorem, preserve coisotropic submanifolds and their characteristic foliations. This result generalizes the Gromov-Eliashberg Theorem and demonstrates that previous rigidity results (on Lagrangians by Laudenbach-Sikorav, and on characteristics of hypersurfaces by Opshtein) are manifestations of a single rigidity phenomenon. To prove the above, we establish a C^0-dynamical property of coisotropic submanifolds which generalizes a foundational theorem in C^0-Hamiltonian dynamics: Uniqueness of generators for…
We associate cotangent models to a neighbourhood of a Liouville torus in symplectic and Poisson manifolds focusing on a special class called $b$-Poisson/$b$-symplectic manifolds. The semilocal equivalence with such models uses the corresponding action-angle coordinate theorems in these settings: the theorem of Liouville-Mineur-Arnold [A74] for symplectic manifolds and an action-angle theorem for regular Liouville tori in Poisson manifolds [LMV11]. Our models comprise regular Liouville tori of Poisson manifolds but also consider the Liouville tori on the singular locus of a $b$-Poisson manifold…
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 obtain estimates showing that on monotone symplectic manifolds (asymptotic) spectral invariants of Hamiltonians which vanish on a non-empty open set, U, descend to Ham_c(M\setminus U) from its universal cover. Furthermore, we show these invariants and are continuous with respect to the C^0-topology on Ham_c(M\setminus U). We apply these results to Hofer geometry and establish unboundedness of the Hofer diameter of $Ham_c(M\setminus U)$ for stably displaceable $U$. We also answer a question of F. Le Roux about $C^0$-continuity properties of the Hofer metric.
In this paper we study a generalized symplectic fixed point problem, first considered by J. Moser in \cite{M}, from the point of view of some relatively recently discovered symplectic rigidity phenomena. This problem has interesting applications concerning global perturbations of Hamiltonian systems.
Let $\mathbb{D}$ be the unit disc in $\mathbb{C}$, then $\mathbb{D}^n(r)$ is the complex or symplectic $n$-discs of radius $r$. Let $z_j = x_j+iy_j\in\mathbb{C}, j=1,2$ and $\mathbb{D}_{\mathbb{R}}^2=\{(z_1,z_2) : |x_1|^2+|x_2|^2<1,|y_1|^2+|y_2|^2<1\}$ be the real bidisc. In this paper we will prove the following two theorems: 1) If $T\in O(4)$ is an orthogonal transformation on $\mathbb{R}^4$, then $T(\mathbb{D}^2)$ is symplectomorphic to $\mathbb{D}^2$ w.r.t. the standard symplectic form on $\mathbb{R}^4$ if and only if $T$ is unitary or conjugate to unitary. 2) For $r\geq 1$ and $n\geq 2$, …
