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.
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 ab…
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 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…
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 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.
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 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 that for $n\geq2$ there exists a compact subset $X$ of the closed ball in $R^{2n}$ of radius $\sqrt{2}$, such that $X$ has Hausdorff dimension $n$ and does not symplectically embed into the standard open symplectic cylinder. The second main result is a lower bound on the $d$-th regular coisotropic capacity, which is sharp up to a factor of 3. For an open subset of a geometrically bounded, aspherical symplectic manifold, this capacity is a lower bound on its displacement energy. The proofs of the results involve a certain Lagrangian submanifold of linear space, which was considered by …
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…
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.
The paper deals with relations between the Hard Lefschetz property, (non)vanishing of Massey products and the evenness of odd-degree Betti numbers of closed symplectic manifolds. It is known that closed symplectic manifolds can violate all these properties (in contrast with the case of Kaehler manifolds). However, the relations between such homotopy properties seem to be not analyzed. This analysis may shed a new light on topology of symplectic manifolds. In the paper, we summarize our knowledge in tables (different in the simply-connected and in symplectically aspherical cases). Also, we disc…
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…
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 define Symplectic cohomology groups for a class of symplectic fibrations with closed symplectic base and convex at infinity fiber. The crucial geometric assumption on the fibration is a negativity property reminiscent of negative curvature in complex vector bundles. When the base is symplectically aspherical we construct a spectral sequence of Leray-Serre type converging to the Symplectic cohomology groups of the total space, and we use it to prove new cases of the Weinstein conjecture.
We prove the Conley conjecture for cotangent bundles of oriented, closed manifolds, and Hamiltonians which are quadratic at infinity, i.e., we show that such Hamiltonians have infinitely many periodic orbits. For the conservative systems, similar results have been proved by Lu and Mazzucchelli using convex Hamiltonians and Lagrangian methods. Our proof uses Floer homological methods from Ginzburg's proof of the Conley Conjecture for closed symplectically aspherical manifolds.
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…
For any symplectic form $ω$ on $T^2\times S^2$ we construct infinitely many nonisomorphic finite groups which admit effective smooth actions on $T^2\times S^2$ that are trivial in cohomology but which do not admit any effective symplectic action on $(T^2\times S^2,ω)$. We also prove that for any $ω$ there is another symplectic form $ω'$ on $T^2\times S^2$ and a finite group acting symplectically and effectively on $(T^2\times S^2,ω')$ which does not admit any effective symplectic action on $(T^2\times S^2,ω)$. A basic ingredient in our arguments is the study of the Jordan property of the sympl…
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…
Schwarz showed that when a closed symplectic manifold (M,\om) is symplectically aspherical (i.e. the symplectic form and the first Chern class vanish on π_2(M)) then the spectral invariants, which are initially defined on the universal cover of the Hamiltonian group, descend to the Hamiltonian group Ham (M,\om). In this note we describe less stringent conditions on the Chern class and quantum homology of M under which the (asymptotic) spectral invariants descend to Ham (M,\om). For example, they descend if the quantum multiplication of M is undeformed and H_2(M) has rank >1, or if the minimal …