24 pages; the paper has a new structure, new results and more references; For example, we have added a new section "Symplectic bundles and symplectic asphericity" and also new results on the section "Gompf symplectic sum and symplectic asphericity"
The main subjects of the paper is studying the fundamental groups of closed symplectically aspherical manifolds. Motivated by some results of Gompf, we introduce two classes of fundamental groups $π_1(M)$ of symplectically aspherical manifolds $M$ with $π_2(M)=0$ and $π_2(M)\neq 0$. Relations between these classes are discussed. We show that several important classes of groups can be realized in both classes, while some of groups can be realized in the first class but not in the second one. Also, we notice that there are some interesting dimensional phenomena in the realization problem.
The above results are framed by a general research of symplectically aspherical manifolds. For example, we find some conditions which imply that the Gompf sum of symplectically aspherical manifolds is symplectically aspherical, or that a total space of a bundle is symplectically aspherical, etc.
We use spectral invariants in Lagrangian Floer theory in order to show that there exist \emph{isometric} embeddings of normed linear spaces (finite or infinite dimensional, depending on the case) into the space of Hamiltonian deformations of certain Lagrangian submanifolds in tame symplectically aspherical manifolds. In addition to providing a new class of examples in which the Lagrangian Hofer metric can be computed explicitly, we refine and generalize some known results about it.
This is a survey article on symplectically aspherical manifolds. The paper contains a discussion on constructions of symplectically aspherical manifolds, their topological properties and the role of this class in symplectic topology. Research perspectives are discussed.
We describe all abelian groups which can appear as the fundamental groups of closed symplectically aspherical manifolds. The proofs use the theory of symplectic Lefschetz fibrations.
We show that a generic Hamiltonian diffeomorphism on a closed symplectic manifold which is symplectically aspherical has at least the stable Morse number of fixed points - this is in line with a conjecture by Arnold.
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…
The purpose of this paper is to study the relation between the $C^0$-topology and the topology induced by the spectral norm on the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of a closed symplectic manifold. Following the approach of Buhovsky-Humilière-Seyfaddini, we prove the $C^0$-continuity of the spectral norm for complex projective spaces and negative monotone symplectic manifolds. The case of complex projective spaces provides an alternative approach to the $C^0$-continuity of the spectral norm proven by Shelukhin. We also prove a partial $C^0$-continuity of the spectral norm for rational sympl…
In this paper we consider the length minimizing properties of Hamiltonian paths generated by quasi-autonomous Hamiltonians on symplectically aspherical manifolds. Motivated by the work of L. Polterovich and M. Schwarz, we study the role of the fixed global extrema in the Floer complex of the generating Hamiltonian. Our main result determines a natural condition on a fixed global maximum of a Hamiltonian which implies that the corresponding path minimizes the positive Hofer length. We use this to prove that a quasi-autonomous Hamiltonian generates a length minimizing path if it has under-twiste…
We show that any symplectically aspherical/Calabi-Yau filling of $Y:=\partial(V\times \mathbb{D})$ has vanishing symplectic cohomology for any Liouville domain $V$. In particular, we make no topological requirement on the filling and $c_1(V)$ can be nonzero. Moreover, we show that for any symplectically aspherical/Calabi-Yau filling $W$ of $Y$, the interior $\mathring{W}$ is diffeomorphic to the interior of $V\times \mathbb{D}$ if $π_1(Y)$ is abelian and $\dim V\ge 4$. And $W$ is diffeomorphic to $V\times \mathbb{D}$ if moreover the Whitehead group of $π_1(Y)$ is trivial.
We study the growth rate of a sequence which measures the uniform norm of the differential under the iterates of maps. On symplectically hyperbolic manifolds, we show that this sequence has at least linear growth for every non-identical symplectomorphisms which are symplectically isotopic to the identity.
We compute the Lagrangian Floer cohomology groups of certain tori in closed simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds arising from Fintushel-Stern knot surgery. These manifolds are usually not symplectically aspherical. As a result of the computation we observe examples where $HF(L_0)\cong HF(L_1)$ and $L_0$ and $L_1$ are smoothly isotopic but $L_0,L_1$ are not symplectically isotopic and are distinguished by $HF(L_0,L_1)$.
We prove a generalization of the theorem which is proved by Fernandez, Ibanez, and de Leon. By this result, we give examples of non-Kähler manifolds which satisfy the property of compact Kähler manifolds concerning the coeffective cohomology.
We construct an action selector on aspherical symplectic manifolds that are closed or convex. Such selectors have been constructed by Matthias Schwarz using Floer homology. The construction we present here is simpler and uses only Gromov compactness.
On closed symplectically aspherical manifolds, Schwarz proved a classical result that the action function of a nontrivial Hamiltonian diffeomorphism is not constant by using Floer homology. In this article, we generalize Schwarz's theorem to the $C^0$-case on closed aspherical surfaces. Our methods involve the theory of transverse foliations for dynamical systems of surfaces inspired by Le Calvez and its recent progresses. As an application, we prove that the contractible fixed points set (and consequently the fixed points set) of a nontrivial Hamiltonian homeomorphism is not connected. Furthe…
Our first main result states that the spectral norm on the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms, introduced in the works of Viterbo, Schwarz and Oh, is continuous with respect to the C^0 topology, when M is symplectically aspherical. This statement was previously proven only in the case of closed surfaces. As a corollary, using a recent result of Kislev and Shelukhin, we obtain C^0 continuity of barcodes on aspherical symplectic manifolds, and furthermore define barcodes for Hamiltonian homeomorphisms. We also present several applications to Hofer geometry and dynamics of Hamiltonian homeomorp…
The rational homology balls $B_n$ appeared in Fintushel and Stern's rational blow-down construction [FS2]. Later, Symington [Sy1], defined this operation in the symplectic category. In [Kh2], the author defined the inverse procedure, the symplectic rational blow-up. In this paper, we study the obstructions to symplectically rationally blowing up a symplectic 4-manifold, i.e. the obstructions to symplectically embedding the rational homology balls $B_n$ into a symplectic 4-manifold. We prove a theorem and give additional examples which suggest that in order to symplectically embed the rational …
A symplectic form is called hyperbolic if its pull-back to the universal cover is a differential of a bounded one-form. The present paper is concerned with the properties and constructions of manifolds admitting hyperbolic symplectic forms. The main results are: * If a symplectic form represents a bounded cohomology class then it is hyperbolic. * The symplectic hyperbolicity is equivalent to a certain isoperimetric inequality. * The fundamental group of symplectically hyperbolic manifold is non-amenable. We also construct hyperbolic symplectic forms on certain bundles and Lefschetz fibrations,…
We show that a small neighborhood of a closed symplectic submanifold in a geometrically bounded aspherical symplectic manifold has non-vanishing symplectic homology. As a consequence, we establish the existence of contractible closed characteristics on any thickening of the boundary of the neighborhood. When applied to twisted geodesic flows on compact symplectically aspherical manifolds, this implies the existence of contractible periodic orbits for a dense set of low energy values.
We continue our study of symplectically flat bundles. We broaden the notion of symplectically flat connections on symplectic manifolds to $ζ$-flat connections on smooth manifolds. These connections on principal bundles can be represented by maps from an extension of the base's fundamental group to the structure group. We introduce functionals with zeroes being symplectically flat connections and study their critical points. Such functionals lead to novel geometric flows. We also describe some characteristic classes of the $ζ$-flat bundles.
Extracting isolated rays from a symplectic manifold result in a manifold symplectomorphic to the initial one. The same holds for higher dimensional parametrized rays under an additional condition. More precisely, let $(M,ω)$ be a symplectic manifold. Let $[0,\infty)\times Q\subset\mathbb{R}\times Q$ be considered as parametrized rays $[0,\infty)$ and let $φ:[-1,\infty)\times Q\to M$ be an injective, proper, continuous map immersive on $(-1,\infty)\times Q$. If for the standard vector field $\frac{\partial}{\partial t}$ on $\mathbb{R}$ and any further vector field $ν$ tangent to $(-1,\infty)\ti…
We construct four-dimensional symplectic cobordisms between contact three-manifolds generalizing an example of Eliashberg. One key feature is that any handlebody decomposition of one of these cobordisms must involve three-handles. The other key feature is that these cobordisms contain chains of symplectically embedded two-spheres of square zero. This, together with standard gauge theory, is used to show that any contact three-manifold of non-zero torsion (in the sense of Giroux) cannot be strongly symplectically fillable. John Etnyre pointed out to the author that the same argument together wi…
In this paper, we compute contact homology of some quasi-regular contact structures, which admit Hamiltonian actions of Reeb type of Lie groups. We will discuss the toric contact case, (where the torus is of Reeb type), and the case of homogeneous contact manifolds. In both of these cases the quotients by the Reeb action are Kähler and admit perfect Morse-Bott functions via the moment map. It turns out that the contact homology depends only on the homology of the symplectic base and the bundle data of the contact manifolds as a circle bundle over the base. Moreover we can identify the relevant…
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.
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.
In this note we extend to non trivial Hamiltonian fibrations over symplectically uniruled manifolds a result of Lu's, \cite{Lu}, stating that any trivial symplectic product of two closed symplectic manifolds with one of them being symplectically uniruled verifies the Weinstein Conjecture for closed separating hypersurfaces of contact type, under certain technical conditions. The proof is based on the product formula for Gromov-Witten invariants ($GW$-invariant) of Hamiltonian fibrations derived in \cite{H}.
Let the circle act symplectically on a compact, connected symplectic manifold $M$. If there are exactly three fixed points, $M$ is equivariantly symplectomorphic to $\mathbb{CP}^2$.
We show that symplectically embedded $(-1)$-tori give rise to certain elements in the symplectic mapping class group of $4$-manifolds. An example is given where such elements are proved to be of infinite order.
We define $S^1$-equivariant symplectic homology for symplectically aspherical manifolds with contact boundary, using a Floer-type construction first proposed by Viterbo. We show that it is related to the usual symplectic homology by a Gysin exact sequence. As an important ingredient of the proof, we define a parametrized version of symplectic homology, corresponding to families of Hamiltonian functions indexed by a finite dimensional smooth parameter space.
We show that every negative definite configuration of symplectic surfaces in a symplectic 4--manifold has a strongly symplectically convex neighborhood. We use this to show that, if a negative definite configuration satisfies an additional negativity condition at each surface in the configuration, and if the complex singularity with resolution diffeomorphic to a neighborhood of the configuration has a smoothing, then the configuration can be symplectically replaced by the smoothing of the singularity. This generalizes the symplectic rational blowdown procedure used in recent constructions of s…
During the last thirty years, symplectic or Marsden--Weinstein reduction has been a major tool in the construction of new symplectic manifolds and in the study of mechanical systems with symmetry. This procedure has been traditionally associated to the canonical action of a Lie group on a symplectic manifold, in the presence of a momentum map. In this note we show that the symplectic reduction phenomenon has much deeper roots. More specifically, we will find symplectically reduced spaces purely within the Poisson category under hypotheses that do not necessarily imply the existence of a moment…
We show that simply connected contact manifolds that are subcritically Stein fillable have a unique symplectically aspherical filling up to diffeomorphism. Various extensions to manifolds with non-trivial fundamental group are discussed. The proof rests on homological restrictions on symplectic fillings derived from a degree-theoretic analysis of the evaluation map on a suitable moduli space of holomorphic spheres. Applications of this homological result include a proof that compositions of right-handed Dehn twists on Liouville domains are of infinite order in the symplectomorphism group. We a…
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 show that the pre-order defined on the category of contact manifolds by arbitrary symplectic cobordisms is considerably less rigid than its counterparts for exact or Stein cobordisms: in particular, we exhibit large new classes of contact 3-manifolds which are symplectically cobordant to something overtwisted, or to the tight 3-sphere, or which admit symplectic caps containing symplectically embedded spheres with vanishing self-intersection. These constructions imply new and simplified proofs of several recent results involving fillability, planarity and non-separating contact type embeddin…
We propose the study of some kind of monopole equations directly associated with a contact structure. Through a rudimentary analysis about the solutions, we show that a closed contact 3-manifold with positive Tanaka-Webster curvature and vanishing torsion must be either not symplectically semifillable or having torsion Euler class of the contact structure.
This paper expands some of the issues of the paper math.SG/0506449. We introduce a new technique to produce symplectic manifolds, by taking a symplectic non-free action of a finite group on a symplectic manifold and resolving symplectically the singularities of the quotient. We also introduce a new type of Massey product to detect non-formality. This allows to show the first example of a non-formal simply connected compact symplectic manifold of dimension 8.
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.
A symplectic manifold $(M,ω)$ is called {\em (symplectically) uniruled} if there is a nonzero genus zero GW invariant involving a point constraint. We prove that symplectic uniruledness is invariant under symplectic blow-up and blow-down. This theorem follows from a general Relative/Absolute correspondence for a symplectic manifold together with a symplectic submanifold. A direct consequence is that symplectic uniruledness is a symplectic birational invariant. Here we use Guillemin and Sternberg's notion of cobordism as the symplectic analogue of the birational equivalence.
In 2002 Polterovich has notably established that on closed aspherical symplectic manifolds, Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of finite order, which we call Hamiltonian torsion, must in fact be trivial. In this paper we prove the first higher-dimensional Hamiltonian no-torsion theorems beyond the symplectically aspherical case. We start by showing that closed symplectic Calabi-Yau and negative monotone symplectic manifolds do not admit Hamiltonian torsion. Going still beyond topological constraints, we prove that every closed positive monotone symplectic manifold $(M,ω)$ admitting Hamiltonian torsio…
