57 Pages, 28 Figures. Mistake in Subsection 4.1 found that directly affects Theorem 1.8 and consequently part of the proof of Theorem 1.4. Theorem 1.8 cannot hold in the stated generality; we thank Dusa McDuff for finding this error. We are working on correcting it
This article introduces a new method to construct volume-filling symplectic embeddings of 4-dimensional ellipsoids by employing polytope mutations in toric and almost-toric varieties. The construction uniformly recovers the full sequences for the Fibonacci Staircase of McDuff-Schlenk, the Pell Staircase of Frenkel-Muller and the Cristofaro-Gardiner-Kleinman's Staircase, and adds new infinite sequences of ellipsoid embeddings. In addition, we initiate the study of symplectic tropical curves for almost-toric fibrations and emphasize the connection to quiver combinatorics.
This note explains how to deduce the wall-crossing formula for toric mutations established by Pascaleff-Tonkonog from the perverse schober of the corresponding local Landau-Ginzburg model. Along the way, we develop a general framework to extract a wall-crossing formula from a perverse schober on the projective line with a single critical point.
ECH capacities give obstructions to symplectically embedding one symplectic four-manifold with boundary into another. We compute the ECH capacities of a large family of symplectic four-manifolds with boundary, called "concave toric domains". Examples include the (nondisjoint) union of two ellipsoids in $\mathbb{R}^4$. We use these calculations to find sharp obstructions to certain symplectic embeddings involving concave toric domains. For example: (1) we calculate the Gromov width of every concave toric domain; (2) we show that many inclusions of an ellipsoid into the union of an ellipsoid and…
Given two 4-dimensional ellipsoids whose symplectic sizes satisfy a specified inequality, we prove that a certain loop of symplectic embeddings between the two ellipsoids is noncontractible. The statement about symplectic ellipsoids is a particular case of a more general result. Given two convex toric domains whose first and second ECH capacities satisfy a specified inequality, we prove that a certain loop of symplectic embeddings between the two convex toric domains is noncontractible. We show how the constructed loops become contractible if the target domain becomes large enough. The proof i…
We prove a general form of the wall-crossing formula which relates the disk potentials of monotone Lagrangian submanifolds with their Floer-theoretic behavior away from a Donaldson divisor. We define geometric operations called mutations of Lagrangian tori in del Pezzo surfaces and in toric Fano varieties of higher dimension, and study the corresponding wall-crossing formulas that compute the disk potential of a mutated torus from that of the original one. In the case of del Pezzo surfaces, this justifies the connection between Vianna's tori and the theory of mutations of Landau-Ginzburg seeds…
A toric domain is a subset of $(\mathbb{C}^n,ω_{\text{std}})$ which is invariant under the standard rotation action of $\mathbb{T}^n$ on $\mathbb{C}^n$. For a toric domain $U$ from a certain large class for which this action is not free, we find a corresponding toric domain $V$ where the standard action is free, and for which $c(U)=c(V)$ for any symplectic capacity $c$. Michael Hutchings gives a combinatorial formula for calculating his embedded contact homology symplectic capacities for certain toric four-manifolds on which the $\mathbb{T}^2$-action is free. Our theorem allows one to extend t…
The Milnor fibre of a $\mathbb{Q}$-Gorenstein smoothing of a Wahl singularity is a rational homology ball $B_{p,q}$. For a canonically polarised surface of general type $X$, it is known that there are bounds on the number $p$ for which $B_{p,q}$ admits a symplectic embedding into $X$. In this paper, we give a recipe to construct unbounded sequences of symplectically embedded $B_{p,q}$ into surfaces of general type equipped with non-canonical symplectic forms. Ultimately, these symplectic embeddings come from Mori's theory of flips, but we give an interpretation in terms of almost toric structu…
In this article we explore compactifications of cluster varieties of finite type in complex dimension two. Cluster varieties can be viewed as the spec of a ring generated by theta functions and a compactification of such varieties can be given by a grading on that ring, which can be described by positive polytopes [17]. In the examples we exploit, the cluster variety can be interpreted as the complement of certain divisors in del Pezzo surfaces. In the symplectic viewpoint, they can be described via almost toric fibrations over $\R^2$ (after completion). Once identifying them as almost toric m…
ECH (embedded contact homology) capacities give obstructions to symplectically embedding one four-dimensional symplectic manifold with boundary into another. These obstructions are known to be sharp when the domain and target are ellipsoids (proved by McDuff), and more generally when the domain is a "concave toric domain" and the target is a "convex toric domain" (proved by Cristofaro-Gardiner). However ECH capacities often do not give sharp obstructions, for example in many cases when the domain is a polydisk. This paper uses more refined information from ECH to give stronger symplectic embed…
We present recursive formulas which compute the recently defined "higher symplectic capacities" for all convex toric domains. In the special case of four-dimensional ellipsoids, we apply homological perturbation theory to the associated filtered L-infinity algebras and prove that the resulting structure coefficients count punctured pseudoholomorphic curves in cobordisms between ellipsoids. As sample applications, we produce new previously inaccessible obstructions for stabilized embeddings of ellipsoids and polydisks, and we give new counts of curves with tangency constraints.
We show that many toric domains $X$ in $R^4$ admit symplectic embeddings $ϕ$ into dilates of themselves which are knotted in the strong sense that there is no symplectomorphism of the target that takes $ϕ(X)$ to $X$. For instance $X$ can be taken equal to a polydisk $P(1,1)$, or to any convex toric domain that both is contained in $P(1,1)$ and properly contains a ball $B^4(1)$; by contrast a result of McDuff shows that $B^4(1)$ (or indeed any four-dimensional ellipsoid) cannot have this property. The embeddings are constructed based on recent advances on symplectic embeddings of ellipsoids, th…
In this paper we obtain sharp obstructions to the symplectic embedding of the lagrangian bidisk into four-dimensional balls, ellipsoids and symplectic polydisks. We prove, in fact, that the interior of the lagrangian bidisk is symplectomorphic to a concave toric domain using ideas that come from billiards on a round disk. In particular, we answer a question of Ostrover. We also obtain sharp obstructions to some embeddings of ellipsoids into the lagrangian bidisk.
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…
This is a book aimed at graduate students and researchers in symplectic geometry, based on a course I taught in 2019. The primary message is that the base of a Lagrangian torus fibration inherits an integral affine structure, which you can use to "read off" a lot of interesting geometry of the total space. Topics covered include: action-angle coordinates, symplectic reduction, toric manifolds, visible and tropical Lagrangians, almost toric systems, Milnor fibres of cyclic quotient singularities, mutation of polygons, non-toric blow-up, an almost toric view on Lisca's classification of fillings…
