The Künneth formula in Floer homology for manifolds with restricted contact type boundary

We prove the Künneth formula in Floer (co)homology for manifolds with restricted contact type boundary. We use Viterbo's definition of Floer homology, involving the symplectic completion by adding a positive cone over the boundary. The Künneth formula implies the vanishing of Floer (co)homology for subcritical Stein manifolds. Other applications include the Weinstein conjecture in certain product manifolds, obstructions to exact Lagrangian embeddings, existence of holomorphic curves with Lagrangian boundary condition, as well as symplectic capacities. Supported by ENS Lyon, école Polytechnique (Palaiseau) and ETH (Zürich).     

The Conley conjecture for the cotangent bundle

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 proven 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.     

Exact Lagrangians in plumbings

Consider a Stein manifold M obtained by plumbing cotangent bundles of manifolds of dimension greater than or equal to 3 at points. We prove that the Fukaya category of closed exact Spin Lagrangians with vanishing Maslov class in M is generated by the compact cores of the plumbing. As applications, we classify exact Lagrangian spheres in A ₂-Milnor fibres of arbitrary dimension, derive constraints on exact Lagrangian fillings of Legendrian unknots in disk cotangent bundles, and prove that the categorical equivalence given by the spherical twist in a homology sphere is typically not realised by any compactly supported symplectomorphism.     

Instanton Floer homology and contact structures

We define an invariant of contact 3-manifolds with convex boundary using Kronheimer and Mrowka’s sutured instanton Floer homology theory. This is the first invariant of contact manifolds—with or without boundary—defined in the instanton Floer setting. We prove that our invariant vanishes for overtwisted contact structures and is nonzero for contact manifolds with boundary which embed into Stein fillable contact manifolds. Moreover, we propose a strategy by which our contact invariant might be used to relate the fundamental group of a closed contact 3-manifold to properties of its Stein fillings. Our construction is inspired by a reformulation of a similar invariant in the monopole Floer setting defined by Baldwin and Sivek (arXiv:1403.1930, 2014).     

Symplectic capacity and the Weinstein conjecture in certain cotangent bundles and Stein manifolds

We use the method proposed by H. Hofer. and C. Viterbo in [18] to calculate the Hofer-Zehnder capacity and prove the Weinstein conjecture in certain cotangent bundles and Stein manifolds.Supported in parts by SFB237 and the Forschunginstitut für Mathematik, ETH-Zentrum, Switzerland.     

Lagrangian Floer theory on compact toric manifolds II: bulk deformations

This is a continuation of part I in the series of the papers on Lagrangian Floer theory on toric manifolds. Using the deformations of Floer cohomology by the ambient cycles, which we call bulk deformations, we find a continuum of non-displaceable Lagrangian fibers on some compact toric manifolds. We also provide a method of finding all fibers with non-vanishing Floer cohomology with bulk deformations in arbitrary compact toric manifolds, which we call bulk-balanced Lagrangian fibers.     

Localization for Involutions in Floer Cohomology

We consider Lagrangian Floer cohomology for a pair of Lagrangian submanifolds in a symplectic manifold M. Suppose that M carries a symplectic involution, which preserves both submanifolds. Under various topological hypotheses, we prove a localization theorem for Floer cohomology, which implies a Smith-type inequality for the Floer cohomology groups in M and its fixed point set. Two applications to symplectic Khovanov cohomology are included.     

The Growth Rate of Symplectic Homology and Affine Varieties

We will show that the cotangent bundle of a manifold whose free loopspace homology grows exponentially is not symplectomorphic to any smooth affine variety. We will also show that the unit cotangent bundle of such a manifold is not Stein fillable by a Stein domain whose completion is symplectomorphic to a smooth affine variety. For instance, these results hold for end connect sums of simply connected manifolds whose cohomology with coefficients in some field has at least two generators. We use an invariant called the growth rate of symplectic homology to prove this result.     

Lagrangian Rabinowitz Floer homology and twisted cotangent bundles

We study the following rigidity problem in symplectic geometry: can one displace a Lagrangian submanifold from a hypersurface? We relate this to the Arnold Chord Conjecture, and introduce a refined question about the existence of relative leaf-wise intersection points, which are the Lagrangian-theoretic analogue of the notion of leaf-wise intersection points defined by Moser (Acta. Math. 141(1–2):17–34, 1978). Our tool is Lagrangian Rabinowitz Floer homology, which we define first for Liouville domains and exact Lagrangian submanifolds with Legendrian boundary. We then extend this to the ‘virtually contact’ setting. By means of an Abbondandolo–Schwarz short exact sequence we compute the Lagrangian Rabinowitz Floer homology of certain regular level sets of Tonelli Hamiltonians of sufficiently high energy in twisted cotangent bundles, where the Lagrangians are conormal bundles. We deduce that in this situation a generic Hamiltonian diffeomorphism has infinitely many relative leaf-wise intersection points.     

Hamiltonian dynamics on convex symplectic manifolds

We study the dynamics of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms on convex symplectic manifolds. To this end we first establish an explicit isomorphism between the Floer homology and the Morse homology of such a manifold, and then use this isomorphism to construct a biinvariant metric on the group of compactly supported Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms analogous to the metrics constructed by Viterbo, Schwarz and Oh. These tools are then applied to prove and reprove results in Hamiltonian dynamics. Our applications comprise a uniform lower estimate for the slow entropy of a compactly supported Hamiltonian diffeomorphism, the existence of infinitely many non-trivial periodic points of a compactly supported Hamiltonian diffeomorphism of a subcritical Stein manifold, new cases of the Weinstein conjecture, and, most noteworthy, new existence results for closed trajectories of a charge in a magnetic field on almost all small energy levels. We shall also obtain some new Lagrangian intersection results. Partially supported by the Swiss National Foundation. Supported by the Swiss National Foundation and the von Roll Research Foundation.     

Piunikhin-Salamon-Schwarz isomorphisms for Lagrangian intersections

We study the intersections of gradient trajectories and holomorphic discs with Lagrangian boundary conditions in cotangent bundles, and give a construction of Piunikhin-Salamon-Schwarz isomorphisms in Lagrangian intersections Floer homology.     

Floer Homology and the Heat Flow

We study the heat flow in the loop space of a closed Riemannian manifold M as an adiabatic limit of the Floer equations in the cotangent bundle. Our main application is a proof that the Floer homology of the cotangent bundle, for the Hamiltonian function kinetic plus potential energy, is naturally isomorphic to the homology of the loop space. J.W. received partial financial support from TH-Projekt 00321. Received: December 2004 Revision: September 2005 Accepted: September 2005     

The Role of the Legendre Transform in the Study of the Floer Complex of Cotangent Bundles

Consider a classical Hamiltonian H on the cotangent bundle T*M of a closed orientable manifold M, and let L:TM → R be its Legendre‐dual Lagrangian. In a previous paper we constructed an isomorphism Φ from the Morse complex of the Lagrangian action functional that is associated to L to the Floer complex that is determined by H. In this paper we give an explicit construction of a homotopy inverse Ψ of Φ. Contrary to other previously defined maps going in the same direction, Ψ is an isomorphism at the chain level and preserves the action filtration. Its definition is based on counting Floer trajectories on the negative half‐cylinder that on the boundary satisfy half of the Hamilton equations. Albeit not of Lagrangian type, such a boundary condition defines Fredholm operators with good compactness properties. We also present a heuristic argument which, independently of any Fredholm and compactness analysis, explains why the spaces of maps that are used in the definition of Φ and Ψ are the natural ones. The Legendre transform plays a crucial role both in our rigorous and in our heuristic arguments. We treat with some detail the delicate issue of orientations and show that the homology of the Floer complex is isomorphic to the singular homology of the loop space of M with a system of local coefficients, which is defined by the pullback of the second Stiefel‐Whitney class of TM on 2‐tori in M.© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Handle attaching in symplectic homology and the Chord Conjecture

Arnold conjectured that every Legendrian knot in the standard contact structure on the 3-sphere possesses a characteristic chord with respect to any contact form. I confirm this conjecture if the know has Thurston-Bennequin invariant −1. More generally, existence of chords is proved for a standard Legendrian unknot on the boundary of a subcritical Stein manifold of any dimension. There is also a multiplicity result which implies in some situations existence of infinitely many chords.?The proof relies on the behaviour of symplectic homology under handle attaching. The main observation is that symplectic homology only changes in the presence of chords. Received July 14, 2000 / final version received June 1, 2001?Published online August 1, 2001     

A Note on Higher Cohomology Groups of Kähler Quotients

Consider a holomorphic $#x2102;^×-action on a possibly noncompact Kähler manifold. We show that the highercohomology groups appearing in the geometric quantization of thesymplectic quotient are isomorphic to the invariant parts of thecorresponding cohomology groups of the original manifold. Fornon-Abelian group actions on compact Kähler manifolds, this resultwas proved recently by Teleman. Our approach is applying the holomorphicinstanton complex to the prequantum line bundles over the symplecticcuts. We also settle a conjecture of Zhang and the present author on theexact sequence of higher cohomology groups in the context of symplecticcutting.     

On the Floer homology of cotangent bundles

This paper concerns Floer homology for periodic orbits and for a Lagrangian intersection problem on the cotangent bundle T* M of a compact orientable manifold M. The first result is a new L^∞ estimate for the solutions of the Floer equation, which allows us to deal with a larger—and more natural—class of Hamiltonians. The second and main result is a new construction of the isomorphism between the Floer homology and the singular homology of the free loop space of M in the periodic case, or of the based loop space of M in the Lagrangian intersection problem. The idea for the construction of such an isomorphism is to consider a Hamiltonian that is the Legendre transform of a Lagrangian on T M and to construct an isomorphism between the Floer complex and the Morse complex of the classical Lagrangian action functional on the space of W^1,2 free or based loops on M. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Wedge Operations and Doubling Operations of Real Toric Manifolds

This paper deals with two things.First,the cohomology of canonical extensions of real topological toric manifolds is computed when coefficient ring G is a commutative ring in which 2 is unit in G.Second,the author focuses on a specific canonical extensions called doublings and presents their various properties.They include existence of infinitely many real topological toric manifolds admitting complex structures,and a way to construct infinitely many real toric manifolds which have an odd torsion in their cohomology groups.Moreover,some questions about real topological toric manifolds related to Halperin's toral rank conjecture are presented.     

Positive vector bundles on complex surfaces

A criterion for the positivity of a semi-stable vector bundle of rank 2 on a projective surface is proved. This is of particular interest for cotangent bundles of surfaces.Dedicated to Professor Karl Stein     

Gromov-Witten invariants and pseudo symplectic capacities

We introduce the concept of pseudo symplectic capacities which is a mild generalization of that of symplectic capacities. As a generalization of the Hofer-Zehnder capacity we construct a Hofer-Zehnder type pseudo symplectic capacity and estimate it in terms of Gromov-Witten invariants. The (pseudo) symplectic capacities of Grassmannians and some product symplectic manifolds are computed. As applications we first derive some general nonsqueezing theorems that generalize and unite many previous versions then prove the Weinstein conjecture for cotangent bundles over a large class of symplectic uniruled manifolds (including the uniruled manifolds in algebraic geometry) and also show that any closed symplectic submanifold of codimension two in any symplectic manifold has a small neighborhood whose Hofer-Zehnder capacity is less than a given positive number. Finally, we give two results on symplectic packings in Grassmannians and on Seshadri constants. Partially supported by the NNSF 10371007 of China and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents of the Education Ministry of China.     

Künneth formulae and cross products for the symplectic Floer cohomology

For a symplectic monotone manifold (P,ω) and φSymp₀(P,ω), we define a -graded symplectic Floer cohomology (a local invariant) over integral coefficients. There is a spectral sequence which arises from a filtration on the -graded symplectic Floer cochain complex. The spectral sequence converges to the -graded symplectic Floer cohomology (a global invariant). We show that there are cross products on the -graded symplectic Floer cohomology and on the spectral sequence, hence on the usual -graded symplectic Floer cohomology. The Künneth formula for the -graded symplectic Floer cohomology is proved and similar results for the spectral sequence are obtained.