Unlinking and unknottedness of monotone Lagrangian submanifolds

Under certain topological assumptions, we show that two monotone Lagrangian submanifolds embedded in the standard symplectic vector space with the same monotonicity constant cannot link one another and that, individually, their smooth knot type is determined entirely by the homotopy theoretic data which classifies the underlying Lagrangian immersion. The topological assumptions are satisfied by a large class of manifolds which are realised as monotone Lagrangians, including tori. After some additional homotopy theoretic calculations, we deduce that all monotone Lagrangian tori in the symplectic vector space of odd complex dimension at least five are smoothly isotopic.Comment: 31 page

Exotic spheres and the topology of symplectomorphism groups

We show that, for certain families $\phi_{\mathbf{s}}$ 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 $\phi^*_{\mathbf{s}}$ gives a noncontractible family of compactly-supported symplectomorphisms. In particular, we find examples: where the Dehn twist along a parametrised Lagrangian sphere depends up to Hamiltonian isotopy on its parametrisation; where the symplectomorphism group is not simply-connected, and where the symplectomorphism group does not have the homotopy-type of a finite CW-complex. We show that these phenomena persist for Dehn twists along the standard matching spheres of the $A_m$-Milnor fibre. The nontriviality is detected by considering the action of symplectomorphisms on the space of parametrised Lagrangian submanifolds. We find related examples of symplectic mapping classes for $T^*(S^n\times S^1)$ and of an exotic symplectic structure on $T^*(S^n\times S^1)$ standard at infinity.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures; v2 streamlined version. Accepted for publication by Journal of Topolog