Growth of maps, distortion in groups and symplectic geometry

In the present paper we study two sequences of real numbers associated to a symplectic diffeomorphism:?• The uniform norm of the differential of its n-th iteration;?• The word length of its n-th iteration, where we assume that our diffeomorphism lies in a finitely generated group of symplectic diffeomorphisms.?We find lower bounds for the growth rates of these sequences in a number of situations. These bounds depend on the symplectic geometry of the manifold rather than on the specific choice of a diffeomorphism. They are obtained by using recent results of Schwarz on Floer homology. As an application, we prove non-existence of certain non-linear symplectic representations for finitely generated groups. Oblatum 6-XII-2001 & 19-VI-2002?Published online: 5 September 2002 RID="*" ID="*"Supported by the Israel Science Foundation founded by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.