arXiv research

We show that, for certain families $φ_{\mathbf{s}}$ of diffeomorphisms of high-dimensional spheres, the commutator of the Dehn twist along the zero-section of $T^*S^n$ with the family of pullbacks $φ^*_{\mathbf{s}}$ gives a noncontractible family of compactly-supported symplectomorphisms. In particular, we find example…

Study symplectic and Hamiltonian actions on irrational ruled surfaces, proving existence and non-existence of extensions.

The paper extends symplectomorphism quasi-morphisms to the entire disk group.

In this paper we apply Donaldson's general moment map framework for the action of a symplectomorphism group on the corresponding space of compatible (almost) complex structures to the case of rational ruled surfaces. This gives a new approach to understanding the topology of their symplectomorphism groups, based on a r…

We count the conjugacy classes of maximal tori in the groups of symplectomorphisms of S^2 \times S^2 and of the blow-up of CP^2 at a point.

We construct some canonically defined central extensions of groups of symplectomorphisms. We show that this central extension is nontrivial in the case of a torus of dimension $\ge 6$ and in the case of a two-dimensional surface of genus $\ge 3$.

Study norm-squared of momentum map in infinite dimensions with applications to symplectic geometry.

Each element of the commutator subgroup of a group can be represented as a product of commutators. The minimal number of factors in such a product is called the commutator length of the element. The commutator length of a group is defined as the supremum of commutator lengths of elements of its commutator subgroup. We …

From the cohomological point of view the symplectomorphism group $Sympl (M)$ of a symplectic manifold is `` tamer'' than the diffeomorphism group. The existence of invariant polynomials in the Lie algebra $\frak {sympl }(M)$, the symplectic Chern-Weil theory, and the existence of Chern-Simons-type secondary classes are…

On groups of symplectomorphisms of the disk, we construct two homogeneous quasi-morphisms which relate to the Calabi invariant and the flux homomorphism respectively. We also show the relation between the quasi-morphisms and the translation number introduced by Poincaré.

We prove that the vector space R^d of any finite dimension d with the standard metric embeds in a bi-Lipschitz way into the group of area-preserving diffeomorphisms G of the two-sphere endowed with the L^p-metric for p>2. Along the way we show that the L^p-metric on the group G is unbounded for p>2 by elementary method…

Study of symplectomorphisms on ruled surfaces under circle actions.

Let $M$ be either $S^2\times S^2$ or the one point blow-up $\cp# \bcp$ of $\cp$. In both cases $M$ carries a family of symplectic forms $\om_\la$, where $\la > -1$ determines the cohomology class $[\om_\la]$. This paper calculates the rational (co)homology of the group $G_\la$ of symplectomorphisms of $(M,\om_\la)$ as …

Banyaga has shown that the group of symplectomorphisms Symp(N) of a compact symplectic manifold (N,w) determines the symplectic structure. This motivates the study of the homotopy properties of Symp(N). Gromov has shown that the group of symplectomorphisms of N is homotopic to SO(3)\times SO(3) when N is the product of…

We prove that the group of compactly supported symplectomorphisms of the standard symplectic ball admits a continuum of linearly independent real-valued homogeneous quasimorphisms. In addition these quasimorphisms are Lipschitz in the Hofer metric and have the following property: the value of each such quasimorphism on…

We show that Thurston's skinning maps of Teichmuller space have finite fibers. The proof centers around a study of two subvarieties of the SL_2(C) character variety of a surface, one associated to complex projective structures and the other associated to a 3-manifold. Using the Morgan-Shalen compactification of the cha…

This thesis studies the symplectic structure of holomorphic coadjoint orbits, and their projections. A holomorphic coadjoint orbit O is an elliptic coadjoint orbit which is endowed with a natural invariant Kählerian structure. These coadjoint orbits are defined for a real semi-simple connected non-compact Lie group G w…

In this paper we compute the homotopy groups of the symplectomorphism groups of the 3-, 4- and 5-point blow-ups of the projective plane (considered as monotone symplectic Del Pezzo surfaces). Along the way, we need to compute the homotopy groups of the compactly supported symplectomorphism groups of the cotangent bundl…

In this paper, we prove homological stability of symplectomorphisms and extended hamiltonians of surfaces made discrete. We construct an isomorphism from the stable homology group of symplectomorphisms and extended Hamiltonians of surfaces to the homology of certain infinite loop spaces. We use these infinite loop spac…

We prove that every RAAG (a Right-Angled Artin Group) embeds in the group of Hamiltonian symplectomorphisms of the 2-sphere.

Making use of the extended flux homomorphism on the group of symplectomorphisms of a closed oriented surface of genus at least 2, we introduce new characteristic classes of foliated surface bundles with symplectic, equivalently area-preserving, total holonomy. These characteristic classes are stable with respect to the…

The Gromov-Eliashberg theorem says that the group of symplectomorphisms of a symplectic manifold is C^0-closed in the group of diffeomorphisms. This can be translated into a statement about the Lagrangian submanifolds which are graphs of symplectomorphisms. It is also known that such Lagrangian submanifolds are locally…

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 co…

This study proves the local existence of a symplectic gradient flow on a flat torus.

For any closed oriented surface F of genus at least three, we prove the existence of foliated F-bundles over surfaces such that the signatures of the total spaces are non-zero. We can arrange that the total holonomy of the horizontal foliations preserve a prescribed symplectic form on the fiber. We relate the cohomolog…

We exhibit many examples of closed complex surfaces whose diffeomorphism groups are not simply-connected and contain loops that are not homotopic to loops of symplectomorphisms.

We consider invariant symplectic connections $\nabla$ on homogeneous symplectic manifolds $(M,ω)$ with curvature of Ricci type. Such connections are solutions of a variational problem studied by Bourgeois and Cahen, and provide an integrable almost complex structure on the bundle of almost complex structures compatible…

We prove that for any closed smooth $4$-manifold $X$ there exists a constant $C$ with the property that each finite subgroup $G<Diff(X)$ has a subgroup $N$ which is abelian or nilpotent of class $2$, and which satisfies $[G:N]\leq C$. We give sufficient conditions on $X$ for $Diff(X)$ to be Jordan, meaning that there e…

Let $(X,ω)$ be a symplectic rational 4 manifold. We study the space of tamed almost complex structures $\mathcal{J}_ω$ using a fine decomposition via smooth rational curves and a relative version of the infinite-dimensional Alexander duality. This decomposition provides new understandings of both the variation and stab…

By a theorem of Banyaga the group of diffeomorphisms of a manifold $P$ preserving a regular contact form $α$ is a central $S^1$ extension of the commutator of the group of symplectomorphisms of the base $B = P/S^1$. We show that if $T$ is a Hamiltonian maximal torus in the group of symplectomorphism of $B$, then its pr…

The paper classifies symplectic forms on R^4 and determines invariants under symplectomorphisms.

In this paper we use a diffeo-geometric framework based on manifolds that are locally modeled on "convenient" vector spaces to study the geometry of some infinite dimensional spaces. Given a finite dimensional symplectic manifold $(M,ω)$, we construct a weak symplectic structure on each leaf ${\textbf I}_{w}$ of a foli…

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 …

The paper extends the classification of bi-invariant 2-forms to infinite-dimensional Lie groups.

This paper classifies symplectic structures on $A_k$ singularities.

In an earlier paper we explained how to convert the problem of symplectically embedding one 4-dimensional ellipsoid into another into the problem of embedding a certain set of disjoint balls into \CP^2 by using a new way to desingularize orbifold blow ups Z of the weighted projective space \CP^2_{1,m,n}. We now use a r…

We consider analytic curves $\nabla^t$ of symplectic connections of Ricci type on the torus $T^{2n}$ with $\nabla^0$ the standard connection. We show, by a recursion argument, that if $\nabla^t$ is a formal curve of such connections then there exists a formal curve of symplectomorphisms $ψ_t$ such that $ψ_t\cdot\nabla^…

We apply the mean curvature flow to deform symplectomorphisms of $\mathbb{CP}^n$. In particular, we prove that, for each dimension n, there exists a constant $Λ$, explicitly computable, such that any $Λ$-pinched symplectomorphism of $\mathbb{CP}^n$ is symplectically isotopic to a biholomorphic isometry.

Let $X$ be any rational ruled symplectic four-manifold. Given a symplectic embedding $ι:B_{c}\into X$ of the standard ball of capacity $c$ into $X$, consider the corresponding symplectic blow-up $\tX_ι$. In this paper, we study the homotopy type of the symplectomorphism group $\Symp(\tX_ι)$, simplifying and extending t…

New result on symplectomorphisms on surfaces, showing vanishing cup product of fluxes.

Constructs a universal Chern-Weil map for infinite dimensional Lie groups.

We explore a relationship between topological properties of orbits of 2-cycles in the symplectomorphism group Symp(M) and the existence of rational curves in M. Under the absence of rational curves hypothesis, we show that evaluation map vanishies on the second homotopy group and obtain a Gottlieb-type vanishing theore…

Symplectic reduction by abelian subgroups coincides under specific conditions.

We establish connections between contact isometry groups of certain contact manifolds and compactly supported symplectomorphism groups of their symplectizations. We apply these results to investigate the space of symplectic embeddings of balls with a single conical singularity at the origin. Using similar ideas, we als…

In his 1992 article on generating functions Viterbo constructed a bi-invariant metric on the group of compactly supported Hamiltonian symplectomorphisms of R^2n. Using the set-up of arXiv:0901.3112 we extend the Viterbo metric to the group of compactly supported contactomorphisms of R^2n x S^1 isotopic to the identity.…

We prove the existence of infinitely many periodic points of symplectomorphisms isotopic to the identity if they admit at least one (non-contractible) hyperbolic periodic orbit and satisfy some condition on its flux. The obtained periodic points correspond to periodic orbits whose free homotopy classes are formed by it…

A right-invariant metric $ρ_α$ on the compactly supported identity component $Cont_0(M,α)$ of the group of contactomorphisms of an arbitrary contact manifold $(M,α)$ is introduced in a similar way that the Hofer metric was defined on the group of Hamiltonian symplectomorphisms of a symplectic manifold. The restriction …

The group of volume preserving diffeomorphisms, the group of symplectomorphisms and the group of contactomorphisms constitute the classical groups of diffeomorphisms. The first homology groups of the compactly supported identity components of the first two groups have been computed by Thurston and Banyaga, respectively…