Lectures on the free period Lagrangian action functional

In this expository article we study the question of the existence of periodic orbits of prescribed energy for classical Hamiltonian systems on compact configuration spaces. We use a variational approach, by studying how the behavior of the free period Lagrangian action functional changes when the energy crosses certain values, known as the Ma\~n\'e critical values.Comment: This expository article is the outcome of two series of lectures that the author gave at two summer schools at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study of Seul in 2010 and at the Universit\'e de Neuch\^atel in 201

A Morse complex for Lorentzian geodesics

We prove the Morse relations for the set of all geodesics connecting two non-conjugate points on a class of globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifolds. We overcome the difficulties coming from the fact that the Morse index of every geodesic is infinite, and from the lack of the Palais-Smale condition, by using the Morse complex approach.Comment: 19 pages; updated references, final versio

When the Morse index is infinite

Let f be a smooth Morse function on an infinite dimensional separable Hilbert manifold, all of whose critical points have infinite Morse index and co-index. For any critical point x choose an integer a(x) arbitrarily. Then there exists a Riemannian structure on M such that the corresponding gradient flow of f has the following property: for any pair of critical points x,y, the unstable manifold of x and the stable manifold of y have a transverse intersection of dimension a(x)-a(y).Comment: 10 page

How large is the shadow of a symplectic ball?

Consider the image of a 2n-dimensional unit ball by an open symplectic embedding into the standard symplectic vector space of dimension 2n. Its 2k-dimensional shadow is its orthogonal projection into a complex subspace of real dimension 2k. Is it true that the volume of this 2k-dimensional shadow is at least the volume of the unit 2k-dimensional ball? This statement is trivially true when k = n, and when k = 1 it is a reformulation of Gromov's non-squeezing theorem. Therefore, this question can be considered as a middle-dimensional generalization of the non-squeezing theorem. We investigate the validity of this statement in the linear, nonlinear and perturbative setting.Comment: Final version, identical to the published one. Added comments about the relationship with a conjecture of Viterbo and related references. Some of the results of this paper are contained in our previous preprint arXiv:1105.2931, which is no longer updated and will never become a published articl

On the global stable manifold

We give an alternative proof of the stable manifold theorem as an application of the (right and left) inverse mapping theorem on a space of sequences. We investigate the diffeomorphism class of the global stable manifold, a problem which in the general Banach setting gives rise to subtle questions about the possibility of extending germs of diffeomorphisms.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX2e file. Revised version (corrected typos, introduction slightly extended). To appear in Studia Mathematic

Estimates and computations in Rabinowitz-Floer homology

The Rabinowitz-Floer homology of a Liouville domain W is the Floer homology of the free period Hamiltonian action functional associated to a Hamiltonian whose zero energy level is the boundary of W. It has been introduced by K. Cieliebak and U. Frauenfelder. Together with A. Oancea, the same authors have recently computed the Rabinowitz-Floer homology of the cotangent disk bundle D^*M of a closed manifold M, by establishing a long exact sequence. The first aim of this paper is to present a chain level construction of this exact sequence. In fact, we show that this sequence is the long homology sequence induced by a short exact sequence of chain complexes, which involves the Morse chain complex and the Morse differential complex of the energy functional for closed geodesics on M. These chain maps are defined by considering spaces of solutions of the Rabinowitz-Floer equation on half-cylinders, with suitable boundary conditions which couple them with the negative gradient flow of the geodesic energy functional. The second aim is to generalize this construction to the case of a fiberwise uniformly convex compact subset W of T^*M whose interior part contains a Lagrangian graph. Equivalently, W is the energy sublevel associated to an arbitrary Tonelli Lagrangian L on TM and to any energy level which is larger than the strict Mane' critical value of L. In this case, the energy functional for closed geodesics is replaced by the free period Lagrangian action functional associated to a suitable calibration of L. An important issue in our analysis is to extend the uniform estimates for the solutions of the Rabinowitz-Floer equation to Hamiltonians which have quadratic growth in the momenta. These uniform estimates are obtained by suitable versions of the Aleksandrov maximum principle.Comment: Revised versio

A non-squeezing theorem for convex symplectic images of the Hilbert ball

We prove that the non-squeezing theorem of Gromov holds for symplectomorphisms on an infinite-dimensional symplectic Hilbert space, under the assumption that the image of the ball is convex. The proof is based on the construction by duality methods of a symplectic capacity for bounded convex neighbourhoods of the origin. We also discuss some examples of symplectomorphisms on infinite-dimensional spaces exhibiting behaviours which would be impossible in finite dimensions.Comment: Added application to the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equatio