In this paper we describe the intersection between the balls of maximal symplectic packings of $¶^2$. This analysis shows the existence of singular points for maximal packings of $¶^2$ by more than three equal balls. It also yields a construction of a class of very regular examples of maximal packings by five balls.
The main goal of this paper is to give constructive proofs of several existence results for symplectic embeddings. The strong relation between symplectic packings and singular symplectic curves, which can be derived from McDuff's inflations on the blow-ups, is revisited through a new inflation technique that lives at the level of the manifold. As an application, we explain constructions of maximal symplectic packings of $P^2$ by 6, 7 or 8 balls.
We show that all closed symplectic 4-manifolds have the packing stability property: there are no obstructions beyond volume to embedding a collection of sufficiently small balls. This generalizes a theorem of Biran which gives the same result under the assumption that the symplectic form lies in a rational cohomology class.
In this paper we present an explicit construction of a relative symplectic packing. This confirms the sharpness of the upper bound for the relative packing of a ball into the pair (CP^2, T^2) of the standard complex projective plane and the Clifford torus, obtained by Biran and Cornea.
We prove packing stability for any closed symplectic manifold with rational cohomology class. This will rely on a general symplectic embedding result for ellipsoids which assumes only that there is no volume obstruction and that the domain is sufficiently thin relative to the target. We also obtain easily computable bounds for the Embedded Contact Homology capacities which are sufficient to imply the existence of some volume preserving embeddings in dimension 4.
In this paper we prove the connectedness of symplectic ball packings in the complement of a spherical Lagrangian, S^2 or RP^2, in symplectic manifolds that are rational or ruled. Via a symplectic cutting construction this is a natural extension of McDuff's connectedness of ball packings in other settings and this result has applications to several different questions: smooth knotting and unknottedness results for spherical Lagrangians, the transitivity of the action of the symplectic Torelli group, classifying Lagrangian isotopy classes in the presence of knotting, and detecting Floer-theoreti…
Given a symplectic manifold (M, ω) and a Lagrangian submanifold L, we construct versions of the symplectic blow-up and blow-down which are defined relative to L. Furthermore, we show that if M admits an anti-symplectic involution ϕ and we blow-up an appropriately symmetric embedding of symplectic balls, then there exists an anti-symplectic involution on the blow-up as well. We derive a homological condition which determines when the topology of a real Lagrangian surface L = Fix(ϕ) changes after a blow down, and we use these constructions to study the real packing numbers and packing stability …
We define and solve the toric version of the symplectic ball packing problem, in the sense of listing all 2n-dimensional symplectic-toric manifolds which admit a perfect packing by balls embedded in a symplectic and torus equivariant fashion. In order to do this we first describe a problem in geometric-combinatorics which is equivalent to the toric symplectic ball packing problem. Then we solve this problem using arguments from Convex Geometry and Delzant theory. Applications to symplectic blowing-up are also presented, and some further questions are raised in the last section.
Let M be a symplectic-toric manifold of dimension at least four. This paper investigates the so called symplectic ball packing problem in the toral equivariant setting. We show that the set of toric symplectic ball packings of M admits the structure of a convex polytope. Previous work of the first author shows that up to equivalence, only CP^1 x CP^1 and CP^2 admit density one packings when n=2 and only CP^n admits density one packings when n>2. In contrast, we show that for a fixed n>=2 and each r in (0, 1), there are uncountably many inequivalent 2n-dimensional symplectic-toric manifolds wit…
Let M be a closed symplectic manifold of volume V. We say that M admits an unobstructed symplectic packing by balls if any collection of symplectic balls (of possibly different radii) of total volume less than V admits a symplectic embedding to M. In 1994 McDuff and Polterovich proved that symplectic packings of Kahler manifolds can be characterized in terms of the Kahler cones of their blow-ups. When M is a Kahler manifold which is not a union of its proper subvarieties (such a manifold is called Campana simple) these Kahler cones can be described explicitly using the Demailly and Paun struct…
Let M be a closed symplectic manifold of volume V. We say that the symplectic packings of M by ellipsoids are unobstructed if any collection of disjoint symplectic ellipsoids (possibly of different sizes) of total volume less than V admits a symplectic embedding to M. We show that the symplectic packings by ellipsoids are unobstructed for all even-dimensional tori equipped with Kahler symplectic forms and all closed hyperkahler manifolds of maximal holonomy, or, more generally, for closed Campana simple manifolds (that is, Kahler manifolds that are not unions of their complex subvarieties), as…
In this article we explore a symplectic packing problem where the targets and domains are $2n$-dimensional symplectic manifolds. We work in the context where the manifolds have first homology group equal to $\mathbb{Z}^n$, and we require the embeddings to induce isomorphisms between first homology groups. In this case, Maley, Mastrangeli and Traynor showed that the problem can be reduced to a combinatorial optimization problem, namely packing certain allowable simplices into a given standard simplex. They designed a computer program and presented computational results. In particular, they dete…
The aim of this paper is to explain a link between symplectic isotopies of open objects such as balls and flexibility properties of symplectic hypersurfaces. We get connectedness results for spaces of symplectic ellipsoids or maximal packings of $P^2$.
In analogy to the relation between symplectic packings and symplectic blow ups we show that multiple point Seshadri constants on projective complex surfaces can be calculated as the supremum of radii of multiple Kähler ball embeddings.
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…
We introduce a procedure for gluing Weinstein domains along Weinstein subdomains. By gluing along flexible subdomains, we show that any finite collection of high-dimensional Weinstein domains with the same topology are Weinstein subdomains of a `maximal' Weinstein domain also with the same topology. As an application, we produce exotic cotangent bundles containing many closed regular Lagrangians that are formally Lagrangian isotopic but not Hamiltonian isotopic and also give a new construction of exotic Weinstein structures on Euclidean space. We describe a similar construction in the contact …
This paper examines the relationship between the symplectic quotient X//G of a Hamiltonian G-manifold X, and the associated symplectic quotient X//T, where T is a maximal torus, in the case in which X//G is a compact manifold or orbifold. The three main results are: a formula expressing the rational cohomology ring of X//G in terms of the rational cohomology ring of X//T; an `integration' formula, which expresses cohomology pairings on X//G in terms of cohomology pairings on X//T; and an index formula, which expresses the indices of elliptic operators on X//G in terms of indices on X//T. (The …
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 show that the linear symplectic and anti-symplectic transformations form the maximal covariance group for both the Wigner transform and Weyl operators. The proof is based on a new result from symplectic geometry which characterizes symplectic and anti-symplectic matrices, and which allows us, in addition, to refine a classical result on the preservation of symplectic capacities of ellipsoids.
We study symplectic structures on filiform Lie algebras -- nilpotent Lie algebras of the maximal length of the descending central sequence. In the present article we classify the Lie algebras with the structure relations of the following form: $$[e_i,e_j]=(j-i)e_{i+j}+\sum_{l{=}1}c_{ij}^l e_{i+j+l}, i+j \le n.$$ In even dimensions the subspace of symplectic Lie algebras has the codimension one.