This survey presents some recent results by the authors and Polterovich on the topological properties of ruled symplectic manifolds. The bundle M \to P \to B that is associated with a ruled manifold has the group of Hamiltonian symplectomorphisms of M as structure group if the base is simply connected. Thus information about Hamiltonian bundles gives stability results for ruled structures as well as obstructions to their existence.
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 study symplectic surfaces in ruled symplectic 4-manifolds which are disjoint from a given symplectic section. As a consequence we see that, in any symplectic 4-manifold, two homologous symplectic surfaces which are sufficiently C^0 close must be Hamiltonian isotopic.
Given a closed symplectic manifold, we study when the Lefschetz decomposition induced by the $\mathfrak{sl}(2;\mathbb{R})$-representation yields a decomposition of the de Rham cohomology. In particular, this holds always true for the second de Rham cohomology group, or if the symplectic manifold satisfies the Hard Lefschetz Condition.
Let $(M,ω)$ be a ruled symplectic four-manifold. If $(M, ω)$ is rational, then every homologically trivial symplectic cyclic action on $(M,ω)$ is the restriction of a Hamiltonian circle action.
We consider aspherical manifolds with torsion-free virtually polycyclic fundamental groups, constructed by Baues. We prove that if those manifolds are cohomologically symplectic then they are symplectic. As a corollary we show that cohomologically symplectic solvmanifolds are symplectic.
We prove that a compact log symplectic manifold has a class in the second cohomology group whose powers, except maybe for the top, are nontrivial. This result gives cohomological obstructions for the existence of b-log symplectic structures similar to those in symplectic geometry.
We continue our previous work to prove that for any non-minimal ruled surface $(M,ω)$, the stability under symplectic deformations of $π_0, π_1$ of $Symp(M,ω)$ is guided by embedded $J$-holomorphic curves. Further, we prove that for any fixed sizes blowups, when the area ratio $μ$ between the section and fiber goes to infinity, there is a topological colimit of $Symp(M,ω_μ).$ Moreover, when the blowup sizes are all equal to half the area of the fiber class, we give a topological model of the colimit which induces non-trivial symplectic mapping classes in $Symp(M,ω) \cap \rm Diff_0(M),$ where $…
Let M:=(M^{4},\om) be a 4-dimensional rational ruled symplectic manifold and denote by w_{M} its Gromov width. Let Emb_ω(B^{4}(c),M) be the space of symplectic embeddings of the standard ball B^4(c) \subset \R^4 of radius r and of capacity c:= πr^2 into (M,\om). By the work of Lalonde and Pinsonnault, we know that there exists a critical capacity \ccrit \in (0,w_{M}] such that, for all c\in(0,\ccrit), the embedding space Emb_ω(B^{4}(c),M) is homotopy equivalent to the space of symplectic frames \SFr(M). We also know that the homotopy type of Emb_ω(B^{4}(c),M) changes when c reaches \ccrit and …
By using help of algebraic operad theory, Leibniz algebra theory and symplectic-Poisson geometry are connected. We introduce the notion of cohomological vector field defined on nongraded symplectic plane. It will be proved that the cohomological vector fields induce the finite dimensional Leibniz algebras by the derived bracket construction. This proposition is a Leibniz analogue of the cohomological field theory in the category of Lie algebras. The basic properties of the cohomological fields will be studied, in particular, we discuss a factorization problem with the cohomological fields and …
We introduce the secondary Stiefel-Whitney class $\tilde w_2$ of homotopically trivial diffeomorphisms and show that a homotopically trivial symplectomorphism of a ruled 4-manifold is isotopic to identity if and only if the class $\tilde w_2$ vanishes. Using this, we give a detailed description of the combinatorial structure of the diffeotopy group of ruled symplectic 4-manifolds $X$, either minimal or blown-up, and its action on the homology and homotopy groups $H_2(X,\zz)$, $π_1(X)$, and $π_2(X)$.
We introduce certain homology and cohomology subgroups for any almost complex structure and study their pureness, fullness and duality properties. Motivated by a question of Donaldson, we use these groups to relate J-tamed symplectic cones and J-compatible symplectic cones over a large class of almost complex manifolds, including all Kahler manifolds, almost Kahler 4-manifolds and complex surfaces.
We discuss how quantitative cohomological informations could provide qualitative properties on complex and symplectic manifolds. In particular we focus on the Bott-Chern and the Aeppli cohomology groups in both cases, since they represent useful tools in studying non Kähler geometry. We give an overview on the comparisons among the dimensions of the cohomology groups that can be defined and we show how we reach the $\partial\overline\partial$-lemma in complex geometry and the Hard-Lefschetz condition in symplectic geometry. For more details we refer to [6] and [29].
In this paper we study the topology of the space $\I_ω$ of complex structures compatible with a fixed symplectic form $ω$, using the framework of Donaldson. By comparing our analysis of the space $\I_ω$ with results of McDuff on the space $\cat J_ω$ of compatible almost complex structures on rational ruled surfaces, we find that $\I_ω$ is contractible in this case. We then apply this result to study the topology of the symplectomorphism group of a rational ruled surface, extending results of Abreu and McDuff.
We classify four-dimensional manifolds endowed with symplectic pairs admitting embedded symplectic spheres with non-negative self-intersection, following the strategy of McDuff's classification of rational and ruled symplectic four manifolds.
Log-symplectic structures are Poisson structures that are determined by a symplectic form with logarithmic singularities. We construct moduli spaces of curves with values in a log-symplectic manifold. Among the applications, we classify symplectically ruled log-symplectic $4$ manifolds (both orientable and non-orientable), and obstruct the existence of contact boundary components, in analogy with well-known theorems by McDuff. Moreover, we study certain log-symplectically ruled surfaces, using tools from symplectic field theory.
We show that hyperelliptic symplectic Lefschetz fibrations are symplectically birational to two-fold covers of rational ruled surfaces, branched in a symplectically embedded surface. This reduces the classification of genus 2 fibrations to the classification of certain symplectic submanifolds in rational ruled surfaces.
Let $X$ be any rational ruled symplectic four-manifold. Given a symplectic embedding $ι:B_{c}\into X$ of the standard ball of capacity $c$ into $X$, consider the corresponding symplectic blow-up $\tX_ι$. In this paper, we study the homotopy type of the symplectomorphism group $\Symp(\tX_ι)$, simplifying and extending the results of math.SG/0207096. This allows us to compute the rational homotopy groups of the space $\IEmb(B_{c},X)$ of unparametrized symplectic embeddings of $B_{c}$ into $X$. We also show that the embedding space of one ball in $CP^2$, and the embedding space of two disjoint ba…
We completely solve the symplectic packing problem with equally sized balls for any rational, ruled, symplectic 4-manifolds. We give explicit formulae for the packing numbers, the generalized Gromov widths, the stability numbers, and the corresponding obstructing exceptional classes. As a corollary, we give explicit values for when an ellipsoid of type $E(a, b)$, with $\frac{b}{a} \in \N$, embeds in a polydisc $P(s,t)$. Under this integrality assumption, we also give an alternative proof of a recent result of M. Hutchings showing that the ECH capacities give sharp inequalities for embedding el…
Relations between the symplectically harmonic cohomology and the coeffective cohomology of a symplectic manifold are obtained. This is achieved through a generalization of the latter, which in addition allows us to provide a coeffective version of the filtered cohomologies introduced by C.-J. Tsai, L.-S. Tseng and S.-T. Yau. We construct closed (simply connected) manifolds endowed with a family of symplectic forms $ω_t$ such that the dimensions of these symplectic cohomology groups vary with respect to $t$. A complete study of these cohomologies is given for 6-dimensional symplectic nilmanifol…
We study properties concerning decomposition in cohomology by means of generalized-complex structures. This notion includes the $\mathcal{C}^\infty$-pure-and-fullness introduced by Li and Zhang in the complex case and the Hard Lefschetz Condition in the symplectic case. Explicit examples on the moduli space of the Iwasawa manifold are investigated.
We show that certain classes of contact 3-manifolds do not admit non-separating contact type embeddings into any closed symplectic 4-manifolds, e.g. this is the case for all contact manifolds that are (partially) planar or have Giroux torsion. The latter implies that manifolds with Giroux torsion do not admit contact type embeddings into any closed symplectic 4-manifolds. Similarly, there are symplectic 4-manifolds that can admit smoothly embedded non-separating hypersurfaces, but not of contact type: we observe that this is the case for all symplectic ruled surfaces.
In this thesis, we study cohomological properties of non-Kähler manifolds. In particular, we are concerned in investigating the cohomology of compact (almost-)complex manifolds, and of manifolds endowed with special structures, e.g., symplectic structures, D-complex structures in the sense of F. R. Harvey and H. B. Lawson, exhaustion functions satisfying positivity conditions.
We realize the hamiltonian action of the one spatial Poincare group G, analogous to the projective unitary representation, on a coadjoint orbit of G whic we interpret as a symplectic space-time where the time is associated to a physical quantity of cohomological origine (the force f). This time is the time delay necessary tor the system under the force f to have momentum p.
A real Bott manifold is the total space of an iterated $\RP ^1$-bundles over a point, where each $\RP^1$-bundle is the projectivization of a Whitney sum of two real line bundles. In this paper, we characterize real Bott manifolds which admit a symplectic form. In particular, it turns out that a real Bott manifold admits a symplectic form if and only if it is cohomologically symplectic. In this case, it admits even a Kähler structure. We also prove that any symplectic cohomology class of a real Bott manifolds can be represented by a symplectic form. Finally, we study the flux of a symplectic re…
We prove that the topological complexity of every symplectically atoroidal manifold is equal to twice its dimension. This is the analogue for topological complexity of a result of Rudyak and Oprea, who showed that the Lusternik--Schnirelmann category of a symplectically aspherical manifold equals its dimension. Symplectically hyperbolic manifolds are symplectically atoroidal, as are symplectically aspherical manifolds whose fundamental group does not contain free abelian subgroups of rank two. Thus we obtain many new calculations of topological complexity, including iterated surface bundles an…
In this short article we give a criterion whether a given minimal symplectic 4-manifold with $b_{2}^{+}=1$ having a torsion-free canonical class is rational or ruled. As a corollary, we confirm that most of homotopy elliptic surfaces $E(1}_{K}$, K is a fibered knot in $S^3$, constructed by R. Fintushel and R. Stern are minimal symplectic 4-manifolds with $b_{2}^{+}=1$ which do not admit a complex structure.
We use symplectic cohomology to study the non-uniqueness of symplectic structures on the smooth manifolds underlying affine varieties. Starting with a Lefschetz fibration on such a variety and a finite set of primes, the main new tool is a method, which we call homologous recombination, for constructing a Lefschetz fibration whose total space is smoothly equivalent to the original variety, but for which symplectic cohomology with coefficients in the given set of primes vanishes (there is also a simpler version that kills symplectic cohomology completely). Rather than relying on a geometric ana…
Modulo trivial exceptions, we show that smoothly nontrivial symplectic sums of symplectic 4-manifolds along surfaces of positive genus are never rational or ruled, and we enumerate each case in which they have Kodaira dimension zero (i.e., are blowups of symplectic 4-manifolds with torsion canonical class). In particular, a symplectic four-manifold of Kodaira dimension zero arises by such a surgery only if it is diffeomorphic to a blowup either of the K3 surface, the Enriques surface, or a member of a particular family of T^2-bundles over T^2 each having b_1=2.
Let $π: P\to B$ be a locally trivial fiber bundle over a connected CW complex $B$ with fiber equal to the closed symplectic manifold $(M,\om)$. Then $π$ is said to be a symplectic fiber bundle if its structural group is the group of symplectomorphisms $\Symp(M,\om)$, and is called Hamiltonian if this group may be reduced to the group $\Ham(M,\om)$ of Hamiltonian symplectomorphisms. In this paper, building on prior work by Seidel and Lalonde, McDuff and Polterovich, we show that these bundles have interesting cohomological properties. In particular, for many bases $B$ (for example when $B$ is a…
This note discusses the structure of J-holomorphic curves in symplectic 4-manifolds (M,\om) when J\in \Jj(\Ss), the set of \om-tame J for which a fixed chain \Ss of transversally intersecting embedded spheres of self-intersection \le -2 is J-holomorphic. Extending work by Biran (in Invent. Math. (1999)), it shows that when (M,\om) is the blow up of a rational or ruled symplectic 4-manifold, any homology class A\in H_2(M;\Z), with nonzero Gromov invariant and nonnegative intersection both with the spheres in \Ss and with the exceptional classes other than A, has an embedded J-holomorphic repres…
Let $J$ be an almost complex structure on a 4-dimensional and unimodular Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$. We show that there exists a symplectic form taming $J$ if and only if there is a symplectic form compatible with $J$. We also introduce groups $H^+_J(\mathfrak{g})$ and $H^-_J(\mathfrak{g})$ as the subgroups of the Chevalley-Eilenberg cohomology classes which can be represented by $J$-invariant, respectively $J$-anti-invariant, 2-forms on $\mathfrak{g}$. and we prove a cohomological $J-$decomposition theorem following \cite{DLZ}: $H^2(\mathfrak{g})=H^+_J(\mathfrak{g})\oplus H^-_J(\mathfrak{g})$…
This paper studies groups of symplectomorphisms of ruled surfaces for symplectic forms with varying cohomology class. This class is characterized by the ratio R of the size of the base to that of the fiber. By considering appropriate spaces of almost complex structures, we investigate how the topological type of these groups changes as R increases. If the base is a sphere, this changes precisely when R passes an integer, and for general bases it stabilizes as R goes to infinity. Our results extend and make more precise some of the conclusions of Abreu--McDuff concerning the rational homotopy t…
In this paper, the symplectic genus for any 2-dimensional class in a 4-manifold admitting a symplectic structure is introduced, and its relation with the minimal genus is studied. It is used to describe which classes in rational and irrational ruled manifolds are realized by connected symplectic surfaces. In particular, we completely determine which classes with square at least -1 in such manifolds can be represented by embedded spheres. Moreover, based on a new characterization of the action of the diffeomorphism group on the intersection forms of a rational manifold, we are able to determine…
Let $M$ be either $S^2\times S^2$ or the one point blow-up $\cp# \bcp$ of $\cp$. In both cases $M$ carries a family of symplectic forms $\om_\la$, where $\la > -1$ determines the cohomology class $[\om_\la]$. This paper calculates the rational (co)homology of the group $G_\la$ of symplectomorphisms of $(M,\om_\la)$ as well as the rational homotopy type of its classifying space $BG_\la$. It turns out that each group $G_\la$ contains a finite collection $K_k, k = 0,...,\ell = \ell(\la)$, of finite dimensional Lie subgroups that generate its homotopy. We show that these subgroups "asymptotically …
We prove that any symplectic 4-manifold which is not a rational or ruled surface, after sufficiently many blow-ups, admits an arbitrary number of nonisomorphic Lefschetz fibrations of the same genus which cannot be obtained from one another via Luttinger surgeries. This generalizes results of Park and Yun who constructed pairs of nonisomorphic Lefschetz fibrations on knot surgered elliptic surfaces. In turn, we prove that there are monodromy factorizations of Lefschetz pencils which have the same characteristic numbers but cannot be obtained from each other via partial conjugations by Dehn twi…
We prove that the group of Hamiltonian automorphisms of a symplectic 4-manifold contains only finitely many conjugacy classes of maximal compact tori with respect to the action of the full symplectomorphism group. We also extend to rational and ruled manifolds a result of Kedra which asserts that, if $M$ is a simply connected symplectic 4-manifold with $b_{2}\geq 3$, and if $\widetilde{M}_δ$ denotes a blow-up of $M$ of small enough capacity $δ$, then the rational cohomology algebra of the Hamiltonian group of $\widetilde{M}_δ)$ is not finitely generated. Both results are based on the fact that…
We consider classes of algebraic manifolds $\mathcal{A}$, of symplectic manifolds $\mathcal{S}$, of symplectic manifolds with the hard Lefschetz property $\mathcal{HS}$ and the class of cohomologically symplectic manifolds $\mathcal{CS}$. For every class of manifolds $\mathcal{C}$ we denote by $\mathcal{EC}(π,n)$ a subclass of $n$-dimensional essential manifolds with fundamental group $π$. In this paper we prove that for all the above classes with symplectically aspherical form the condition $\mathcal{EC}(π,2n)\ne \emptyset$ implies that $\mathcal{EC}(π,2n-2)\ne\emptyset $ for every $n>2$. Als…
We study a symplectic surgery operation we call unchaining, which effectively reduces the second Betti number and the symplectic Kodaira dimension at the same time. Using unchaining, we give novel constructions of symplectic Calabi-Yau surfaces from complex surfaces of general type, as well as from rational and ruled surfaces via the natural inverse of this operation. Combining the unchaining surgery with others, which all correspond to certain monodromy substitutions for Lefschetz pencils, we provide further applications, such as a complete resolution of a conjecture of Stipsicz on the existe…
This is a collection of results on the topology of toric symplectic manifolds. Using an idea of Borisov, we show that a closed symplectic manifold supports at most a finite number of toric structures. Further, the product of two projective spaces of complex dimension at least two (and with a standard product symplectic form) has a unique toric structure. We then discuss various constructions, using wedging to build a monotone toric symplectic manifold whose center is not the unique point displaceable by probes, and bundles and blow ups to form manifolds with more than one toric structure. The …
In this paper we show that the Seiberg--Witten invariant is zero for all smooth 4--manifolds with $b_+{>}1$ which admit circle actions that have at least one fixed point. Furthermore, we show that all symplectic 4--manifolds which admit circle actions with fixed points are rational or ruled, and thus admit a symplectic circle action.
Motivated by observations in physics, mirror symmetry is the concept that certain manifolds come in pairs $X$ and $Y$ such that the complex geometry on $X$ mirrors the symplectic geometry on $Y$. It allows one to deduce symplectic information about $Y$ from known complex properties of $X$. Strominger-Yau-Zaslow arXiv:hep-th/9606040 described how such pairs arise geometrically as torus fibrations with the same base and related fibers, known as SYZ mirror symmetry. Kontsevich arXiv:alg-geom/9411018 conjectured that a complex invariant on $X$ (the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves) sho…
We study generators of the fundamental group of the group of symplectomorphisms $\mathrm{Symp}({\mathbb C\mathbb P}^2\#\,5\overline{\mathbb C\mathbb P}\,\!^2, ω)$ for some particular symplectic forms. It was observed by J. Kȩdra that there are many symplectic 4-manifolds $(M, ω)$, where $M$ is neither rational nor ruled, that admit no circle action and $π_1 (\mathrm{Ham} (M,ω))$ is nontrivial. On the other hand, it follows from previous results that the fundamental group of the group $\mathrm{Symp}_h({\mathbb C\mathbb P}^2\#\,k\,\overline{\mathbb C\mathbb P}\,\!^2, ω)$, of symplectomorphisms t…
Motivated by the recent connection between nonholonomic integrable systems and twisted Poisson manifolds made in \cite{balseiro_garcia_naranjo}, this paper investigates the global theory of integrable Hamiltonian systems on almost symplectic manifolds as an initial step to understand Hamiltonian integrability on twisted Poisson (and Dirac) manifolds. Non-commutative integrable Hamiltonian systems on almost symplectic manifolds were first defined in \cite{fasso_sansonetto}, which proved existence of local generalised action-angle coordinates in the spirit of the Liouville-Arnol'd theorem. In an…
