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We relate non-orderability in contact topology to shortening in the contact Hofer norm. Combined with considerations of open books, this provides many new examples of non-orderable contact manifolds, including contact boundaries of subcritical Weinstein domains, and in particular the long-standing case of the standard $S^1 \times S^2.$ We also produce new examples of contact manifolds admitting contactomorphisms without translated points, provide obstructions to subcritical polarizations of symplectic manifolds, and establish a $\mathcal{C}^0$-continuity property of the contact Hofer metric., Comment: 27 pages

We provide a counterexample to the Lagrangian Poincar\'e recurrence conjecture of Ginzburg and Viterbo in all dimensions $6$ and greater., Comment: 5 pages; simplified the argument and corrected a mistake

We prove that autonomous Hamiltonian flows on the two-sphere exhibit the following dichotomy: the Hofer norm either grows linearly or is bounded in time by a universal constant C. Our approach involves a new technique, Hamiltonian symmetrization. Essentially, we prove that every autonomous Hamiltonian diffeomorphism is conjugate to an element C-close in the Hofer metric to one generated by a function of the height., Comment: 30 pages, 3 figures

We prove new cases of the Hilbert-Smith conjecture for actions by natural homeomorphisms in symplectic topology. Specifically, we prove that the group of $p$-adic integers $\mathbb Z_p$ does not admit non-trivial continuous actions by Hamiltonian homeomorphisms, the $C^0$ limits of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms, on symplectically aspherical symplectic manifolds. For a class of symplectic manifolds, including all standard symplectic tori, we deduce that a locally compact group acting faithfully by homeomorphisms in the $C^0$ closure of time-one maps of symplectic isotopies must be a Lie group. Our methods of proof differ from prior approaches to the question and involve barcodes and power operations in Floer cohomology. They also apply to other natural metrics in symplectic topology, notably Hofer's metric. An appendix by Leonid Polterovich uses this to deduce obstructions on Hamiltonian actions by semi-simple $p$-adic analytic groups., Comment: 18 pages; appendix by Leonid Polterovich; modifications of Remarks 9, 19 and Example 20

Spectral invariants are quantitative measurements in symplectic topology coming from Floer homology theory. We study their dependence on the choice of coefficients in the context of Hamiltonian Floer homology. We discover phenomena in this setting which hold for $\mathbb{Z}$-coefficients and fail for all field coefficients. For example, we prove that the spectral norm, an important metric derived from spectral invariants, is unbounded over $\mathbb{Z}$ for complex projective spaces, while it is uniformly bounded over all fields. This allows us to answer a symplectic version of a question of Hingston, originally asked in the setting of the energy functional on the loop space. We also provide applications to Hamiltonian dynamics and Hofer's geometry., Comment: v1: 39 pages; v2: final version, 42 pages, minor changes, to appear in Advances in Mathematics

We prove that if the $m$-th homotopy group for $m \geq 2$ of a closed manifold has non-trivial invariants or coinvariants under the action of the fundamental group, then there exist infinitely many geometrically distinct closed geodesics for a $C^4$-generic Riemannian metric. If moreover there are infinitely many conjugacy classes in the fundamental group, then the same holds for every Riemannian metric., Comment: 8 pages

An example of Cornalba and Shiffman from 1972 disproves in dimension two or higher a classical prediction that the count of zeros of holomorphic self-mappings of the complex linear space should be controlled by the maximum modulus function. We prove that such a bound holds for a modified coarse count inspired by the theory of persistence modules originating in topological data analysis., Comment: 37 pages, 6 figures; revision: simplified proofs, added results about islands

Courant's theorem implies that the number of nodal domains of a Laplace eigenfunction is controlled by the corresponding eigenvalue. Over the years, there have been various attempts to find an appropriate generalization of this statement in different directions. We propose a new take on this problem using ideas from topological data analysis. We show that if one counts the nodal domains in a coarse way, basically ignoring small oscillations, Courant's theorem extends to linear combinations of eigenfunctions, to their products, to other operators, and to higher topological invariants of nodal sets. We also obtain a coarse version of the B\'ezout estimate for common zeros of linear combinations of eigenfunctions. We show that our results are essentially sharp and that the coarse count is necessary, since these extensions fail in general for the standard count. Our approach combines multiscale polynomial approximation in Sobolev spaces with new results in the theory of persistence modules and barcodes., Comment: 70 pages, 4 figures; minor revision

We prove a number of new results on the large-scale geometry of the $L^p$-metrics on the group of area-preserving diffeomorphisms of each orientable surface. Our proofs use in a key way the Fulton-MacPherson type compactification of the configuration space of $n$ points on the surface due to Axelrod-Singer and Kontsevich. This allows us to apply the Schwarz-Milnor lemma to configuration spaces, a natural approach which we carry out successfully for the first time. As sample results, we prove that all right-angled Artin groups admit quasi-isometric embeddings into the group of area-preserving diffeomorphisms endowed with the $L^p$-metric, and that all Gambaudo-Ghys quasi-morphisms on this metric group coming from the braid group on $n$ strands are Lipschitz. This was conjectured to hold, yet proven only for low values of $n$ and the genus $g$ of the surface., Comment: 17 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1604.06953

We study configurations of disjoint Lagrangian submanifolds in certain low-dimensional symplectic manifolds from the perspective of the geometry of Hamiltonian maps. We detect infinite-dimensional flats in the Hamiltonian group of the two-sphere equipped with Hofer's metric, prove constraints on Lagrangian packing, find instances of Lagrangian Poincar\'{e} recurrence, and present a new hierarchy of normal subgroups of area-preserving homeomorphisms of the two-sphere. The technology involves Lagrangian spectral invariants with Hamiltonian term in symmetric product orbifolds., Comment: 47 pages; moderate revision, added Corollary 1, Definition 11, and Proposition 13

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 $(M,\omega)$ admitting Hamiltonian torsion is geometrically uniruled by holomorphic spheres for every $\omega$-compatible almost complex structure, partially answering a question of McDuff-Salamon. This provides many additional no-torsion results, and as a corollary yields the geometric uniruledness of monotone Hamiltonian $S^1$-manifolds, a fact closely related to a celebrated result of McDuff from 2009. Moreover, the non-existence of Hamiltonian torsion implies the triviality of Hamiltonian actions of lattices like $SL(k,\mathbb{Z})$ for $k \geq 2,$ as well as those of compact Lie groups. Finally, for monotone symplectic manifolds admitting Hamiltonian torsion, we prove an analogue of Newman's theorem on finite transformation groups for several natural norms on the Hamiltonian group: such subgroups cannot be contained in arbitrarily small neighborhoods of the identity. Our arguments rely on generalized Morse-Bott methods, as well as on quantum Steenrod powers and Smith theory in filtered Floer homology., Comment: 51 pages; minor improvements in the exposition

In this note we prove that if a closed monotone symplectic manifold admits a Hamiltonian pseudo-rotation, which may be degenerate, then the quantum Steenrod square of the cohomology class Poincar\'{e} dual to the point must be deformed. This result gives restrictions on the existence of pseudo-rotations, implying a form of uniruledness by pseudo-holomorphic spheres, and generalizes a recent result of the author. The new component in the proof consists in an elementary calculation with capped periodic orbits., Comment: 5 pages

In this note we prove that for each positive integer $m$ there exists a bi-Lipschitz embedding $Z^m\to Ham(S^2)$, where $Ham(S^2)$ is equipped with the entropy metric. In particular, the same result holds when the entropy metric is substituted with the autonomous metric., Comment: 7 pages

In this note we prove that if a closed monotone symplectic manifold $M$ of dimension $2n,$ satisfying a homological condition that holds in particular when the minimal Chern number is $N>n,$ admits a Hamiltonian pseudo-rotation, then the quantum Steenrod square of the point class must be deformed. This gives restrictions on the existence of pseudo-rotations. Our methods rest on previous work of the author, Zhao, and Wilkins, going back to the equivariant pair-of-pants product-isomorphism of Seidel., Comment: 17 pages; revision of exposition

We prove that if a Hamiltonian diffeomorphism of a closed monotone symplectic manifold with semisimple quantum homology has more contractible fixed points, counted homologically, than the total dimension of the homology of the manifold, then it must have an infinite number of contractible periodic points. This constitutes a higher-dimensional homological generalization of a celebrated result of Franks from 1992, as conjectured by Hofer and Zehnder in 1994., Comment: 54 pages; improvements in exposition, revision of Section 6, results extended to all ground fields

Let $p \geq 2$ be a prime, and $\mathbb{F}_p$ be the field with $p$ elements. Extending a result of Seidel for $p=2,$ we construct an isomorphism between the Floer cohomology of an exact or Hamiltonian symplectomorphism $\phi,$ with $\mathbb{F}_p$ coefficients, and the $\mathbb{Z}/p \mathbb{Z}$-equivariant Tate Floer cohomology of its $p$-th power $\phi^p.$ The construction involves a Kaledin-type quasi-Frobenius map, as well as a $\mathbb{Z}/p \mathbb{Z}$-equivariant pants product: an equivariant operation with $p$ inputs and $1$ output. Our method of proof involves a spectral sequence for the action filtration, and a local $\mathbb{Z}/p \mathbb{Z}$-equivariant coproduct providing an inverse on the $E^2$-page. This strategy has the advantage of accurately describing the effect of the isomorphism on filtration levels. We describe applications to the symplectic mapping class group, as well as develop Smith theory for the persistence module of a Hamiltonian diffeomorphism $\phi$ on symplectically aspherical symplectic manifolds. We illustrate the latter by giving a new proof of the celebrated no-torsion theorem of Polterovich, and by relating the growth rate of the number of periodic points of the $p^k$-th iteration of $\phi$ and its distance to the identity. Along the way, we prove a sharpening of the classical Smith inequality for actions of $\mathbb{Z}/p \mathbb{Z}.$, Comment: 72 pages, 8 figures; version accepted at J. Symplectic Geom.; further minor improvements in the exposition

We identify a new class of closed smooth manifolds for which there exists a uniform bound on the Lagrangian spectral norm of Hamiltonian deformations of the zero section in a unit cotangent disk bundle, settling a well-known conjecture of Viterbo from 2007 as the special case of $T^n.$ This class of manifolds is defined in topological terms involving the Chas-Sullivan algebra and the BV-operator on the homology of the free loop space, contains spheres and is closed under products. We discuss generalizations and various applications., Comment: 20 pages; improvements in the exposition, new title

We prove a conjecture of Viterbo from 2007 on the existence of a uniform bound on the Lagrangian spectral norm of Hamiltonian deformations of the zero section in unit cotangent disk bundles, for bases given by compact rank one symmetric spaces $S^n, \mathbb{R} P^n, \mathbb{C} P^n, \mathbb{H} P^n,$ $n\geq 1.$ We discuss generalizations and give applications, in particular to $C^0$ symplectic topology. Our key methods, which are of independent interest, consist of a reinterpretation of the spectral norm via the asymptotic behavior of a family of cones of filtered morphisms, and a quantitative deformation argument for Floer persistence modules, that allows to excise a divisor., Comment: 39 pages

We investigate the relations between algebraic structures, spectral invariants, and persistence modules, in the context of monotone Lagrangian Floer homology with Hamiltonian term. Firstly, we use the newly introduced method of filtered continuation elements to prove that the Lagrangian spectral norm controls the barcode of the Hamiltonian perturbation of the Lagrangian submanifold, up to shift, in the bottleneck distance. Moreover, we show that it satisfies Chekanov type low-energy intersection phenomena, and non-degeneracy theorems. Secondly, we introduce a new averaging method for bounding the spectral norm from above, and apply it to produce precise uniform bounds on the Lagrangian spectral norm in certain closed symplectic manifolds. Finally, by using the theory of persistence modules, we prove that our bounds are in fact sharp in some cases. Along the way we produce a new calculation of the Lagrangian quantum homology of certain Lagrangian submanifolds, and answer a question of Usher., Comment: 71 pages, 6 figures

Under certain assumptions (such as weak exacteness or monotonicity) we show that splitting Lagrangians through cobordism has an energy cost and, from this cost being smaller than certain explicit bounds, we deduce some strong forms of rigidity of Lagrangian intersections. As a consequence, we construct some new pseudo-metrics and metrics on certain classes of Lagrangian submanifolds. We also fit these constructions in a more general setting, independent of Lagrangian cobordism. As a main technical tool, we develop aspects of the theory of (weakly) filtered A-infinity categories., Comment: 108 pages, 10 figures

Symplectic flux measures the areas of cylinders swept in the process of a Lagrangian isotopy. We study flux via a numerical invariant of a Lagrangian submanifold that we define using its Fukaya algebra. The main geometric feature of the invariant is its concavity over isotopies with linear flux. We derive constraints on flux, Weinstein neighbourhood embeddings and holomorphic disk potentials for Gelfand-Cetlin fibres of Fano varieties in terms of their polytopes. We also describe the space of fibres of almost toric fibrations on the complex projective plane up to Hamiltonian isotopy, and provide other applications., Comment: 49 pages, 15 figures; erased Section 8 since it contained a gap, added Section 5.5

We introduce a new notion of persistence modules endowed with operators. It encapsulates the additional structure on Floer-type persistence modules coming from the intersection product with classes in the ambient (quantum) homology, along with a few other geometric situations. We provide sample applications to the $C^0$-geometry of Morse functions and to Hofer's geometry of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms, that go beyond spectral invariants and traditional persistent homology., Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures

We show that for each $p \geq 1,$ the $L^p$-metric on the group of area-preserving diffeomorphisms of the two-sphere has infinite diameter. This solves the last open case of a conjecture of Shnirelman from 1985. Our methods extend to yield stronger results on the large-scale geometry of the corresponding metric space, completing an answer to a question of Kapovich from 2012. Our proof uses configuration spaces of points on the two-sphere, quasi-morphisms, optimally chosen braid diagrams, and, as a key element, the cross-ratio map $X_4(\mathbb{C} P^1) \to \mathcal{M}_{0,4} \cong \mathbb{C} P^1 \setminus \{\infty,0,1\}$ from the configuration space of $4$ points on $\mathbb{C} P^1$ to the moduli space of complex rational curves with $4$ marked points., Comment: 19 pages, 1 figure; supersedes arXiv:1304.7037; small changes in exposition

We prove that the autonomous norm on the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of the two-dimensional torus is unbounded. We provide explicit examples of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms with arbitrarily large autonomous norm. For the proofs we construct quasimorphisms on $Ham(T^2)$ and some of them are Calabi., Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures

We introduce new pseudo-metrics on spaces of Lagrangian submanifolds of a symplectic manifold $(M,\omega)$ by considering areas associated to projecting Lagrangian cobordisms in $\mathbb{C} \times M$ to the "time-energy plane" $\mathbb{C}$. We investigate the non-degeneracy properties of these pseudo-metrics, reflecting the rigidity and flexibility aspects of Lagrangian cobordisms., Comment: 39 pages, 9 figures

We introduce new invariants of Hamiltonian fibrations with values in the suitably twisted K-theory of the base. Inspired by techniques of geometric quantization, our invariants arise from the family analytic index of a family of natural $Spin^c$-Dirac operators. As an application we give new examples of non-trivial Hamiltonian fibrations, that have not been previously detected by other methods. As one crucial ingredient we construct a potentially new homotopy equivalence map, with a certain naturality property, from $BU$ to the space of index $0$ Fredholm operators on a Hilbert space, using elements of modern theory of homotopy colimits., Comment: 22 pages; improvements in exposition, version accepted by JSG

We prove a $C^0$ a priori estimate on a solution of the quaternionic Calabi problem on an arbitrary compact connected HKT-manifold. This generalizes earlier works where this result was proven under certain extra assumptions on the manifold., Comment: 51 pages; minor corrections

We find robust obstructions to representing a Hamiltonian diffeomorphism as a full $k$-th power, $k \geq 2,$ and in particular, to including it into a one-parameter subgroup. The robustness is understood in the sense of Hofer's metric. Our approach is based on the theory of persistence modules applied in the context of filtered Floer homology. We present applications to geometry and dynamics of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms., Comment: 66 pages, 6 figures; introduction expanded, small changes in the exposition

We show that the $L^{\infty}$-norm of the contact Hamiltonian induces a non-degenerate right-invariant metric on the group of contactomorphisms of any closed contact manifold. This contact Hofer metric is not left-invariant, but rather depends naturally on the choice of a contact form $\alpha,$ whence its restriction to the subgroup of $\alpha$-strict contactomorphisms is bi-invariant. The non-degeneracy of this metric follows from an analogue of the energy-capacity inequality. We show furthermore that this metric has infinite diameter in a number of cases by investigating its relations to previously defined metrics on the group of contact diffeomorphisms. We study its relation to Hofer's metric on the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms, in the case of prequantization spaces. We further consider the distance in this metric to the Reeb one-parameter subgroup, which yields an intrinsic formulation of a small-energy case of Sandon's conjecture on the translated points of a contactomorphism. We prove this Chekanov-type statement for contact manifolds admitting a strong exact filling., Comment: 25 pages; Proposition 19 improved; slight improvements in the exposition

We give an alternative proof of a theorem of Gambaudo-Ghys and Fathi on the interpretation of the Calabi homomorphism for the standard symplectic disc as an average rotation number. This proof uses only basic complex analysis., Comment: 4 pages

In this paper, we prove the main conjecture on $g$-areas that was announced by the first author in 2004. It states that the $g$-area of any Hamiltonian diffeomorphism $\phi$ is equal to the positive Hofer distance between $\phi$ and the subspace of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms that can be expressed as a product of at most $g$ commutators., Comment: 9 pages; Submitted

We prove a number of results on the interrelation between the $L^p$-metric on the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of surfaces and the subset of all autonomous Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms. More precisely, we show that there are Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of all surfaces of genus $g\neq 1$ lying arbitrarily $L^p$-far from this subset; answering a variant of a question of Polterovich for the $L^p$-metric., Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures. Contains results from arXiv:1305.2757

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 methods., Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure; a revised manuscript correcting a mistake in the original version, the main result holds for p>2

We establish a C^0 a priori bound on the solutions of the quaternionic Calabi-Yau equation (of Monge-Ampere type) on compact HKT manifolds with a locally flat hypercomplex structure. As an intermediate step, we prove a quaternionic version of the Gauduchon theorem., Comment: 15 pages; the definition of quaternionic Hessian is replaced with the transposed matrix; other minor corrections

We extend the definition of Weinstein's Action homomorphism to Hamiltonian actions with equivariant moment maps of (possibly infinite-dimensional) Lie groups on symplectic manifolds, and show that under conditions including a uniform bound on the symplectic areas of geodesic triangles the resulting homomorphism extends to a quasimorphism on the universal cover of the group. We apply these principles to finite dimensional Hermitian Lie groups like Sp(2n,R), reinterpreting the Guichardet-Wigner quasimorphisms, and to the infinite dimensional groups of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms Ham(M,\om) of closed symplectic manifolds (M,\om), that act on the space of compatible almost complex structures with an equivariant moment map given by the theory of Donaldson and Fujiki. We show that the quasimorphism on \widetilde{Ham}(M,\om) obtained in the second case is Symp(M,\om)-congjugation-invariant and compute its restrictions to \pi_1(Ham(M,\om)) via a homomorphism introduced by Lalonde-McDuff-Polterovich, answering a question of Polterovich; to the subgroup Hamiltonian biholomorphisms via the Futaki invariant; and to subgroups of diffeomorphisms supported in an embedded ball via the Barge-Ghys average Maslov quasimorphism, the Calabi homomorphism and the average Hermitian scalar curvature. We show that when c_1(TM)=0 this quasimorphism is proportional to a quasimorphism of Entov and when [\om] is a non-zero multiple of c_1(TM), it is proportional to a quasimorphism due to Py. As an application we show that the L^2_2-distance on \widetilde{Ham}(M,\om) is unbounded, similarly to the results of Eliashberg-Ratiu for the L^2_1-distance., Comment: 40 pages; minor changes; submitted

In this note the interrelations between several natural morphisms on the $\pi_1$ of groups of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms are investigated. As an application, the equality of the (non-linear) Maslov index of loops of quantomorphisms of prequantizations of $\C P^n$ and the Calabi-Weinstein invariant is shown, settling affirmatively a conjecture by A. Givental. We also prove the proportionality of the mixed action-Maslov morphism and the Futaki invariant on loops of Hamiltonian biholomorphisms of Fano Kahler manifolds, as suggested by C. Woodward. Finally, a family of generalized action-Maslov invariants is computed for toric manifolds via barycenters of their moment polytopes, with an application to mass-linear functions recently introduced by D. McDuff and S. Tolman., Comment: 22 pages; cosmetic changes