An integer valued bi-invariant metric on the group of contactomorphisms of R^2n x S^1

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 also prove that the contactomorphism group is unbounded with respect to this metric.Comment: 10 pages, final versio

Bi-invariant metrics on contactomorphism groups

Contact manifolds are odd-dimensional smooth manifolds endowed with a maximally non-integrable field of hyperplanes. They are intimately related to symplectic manifolds, i.e. even-dimensional smooth manifolds endowed with a closed non-degenerate 2-form. Although in symplectic topology a famous bi-invariant metric, the Hofer metric, has been studied since more than 20 years ago, it is only recently that some somehow analogous bi-invariant metrics have been discovered on the group of diffeomorphisms that preserve a contact structure. In this expository article I will review some constructions of bi-invariant metrics on the contactomorphism group, and how these metrics are related to some other global rigidity phenomena in contact topology which have been discovered in the last few years, in particular the notion of orderability (due to Eliashberg and Polterovich) and an analogue in contact topology (due to Eliashberg, Kim and Poltorovich) of Gromov's symplectic non-squeezing theorem.Comment: Expository article, written in occasion of the 5-th IST-IME meeting in S\~ao Paulo (July 2014) in honor of Prof. Orlando Lopes. To appear in the S\~ao Paulo Journal of Mathematical Science

Givental's non-linear Maslov index on lens spaces

Givental's non-linear Maslov index, constructed in 1990, is a quasimorphism on the universal cover of the identity component of the contactomorphism group of real projective space. This invariant was used by several authors to prove contact rigidity phenomena such as orderability, unboundedness of the discriminant and oscillation metrics, and a contact geometric version of the Arnold conjecture. In this article we give an analogue for lens spaces of Givental's construction and its applications.Comment: 44 pages; v3: minor changes; v2: besides minor changes, we corrected a mistake in Corollary 1.3(iv

Contact non-squeezing at large scale via generating functions

Using SFT techniques, Eliashberg, Kim and Polterovich (2006) proved that if $\pi R_2^2 \leq K \leq \pi R_1^2$ for some integer $K$ then there is no contact squeezing in $\mathbb{R}^{2n} \times S^1$ of the prequantization of the ball of radius $R_1$ into the prequantization of the ball of radius $R_2$. This result was extended to the case of balls of radius $R_1$ and $R_2$ with $1 \leq \pi R_2^2 \leq \pi R_1^2$ by Chiu (2017) and the first author (2016), using respectively microlocal sheaves and SFT. In the present article we recover this general contact non-squeezing theorem using generating functions, a classical method based on finite dimensional Morse theory. More precisely, we develop an equivariant version, with respect to a certain action of a finite cyclic group, of the generating function homology for domains of $\mathbb{R}^{2n} \times S^1$ defined by the second author (2011). A key role in the construction is played by translated chains of contactomorphisms, a generalization of translated points.Comment: 32 page

On iterated translated points for contactomorphisms of R^{2n+1} and R^{2n} x S^1

A point q in a contact manifold is called a translated point for a contactomorphism \phi, with respect to some fixed contact form, if \phi (q) and q belong to the same Reeb orbit and the contact form is preserved at q. The problem of existence of translated points is related to the chord conjecture and to the problem of leafwise coisotropic intersections. In the case of a compactly supported contactomorphism of R^{2n+1} or R^{2n} x S^1 contact isotopic to the identity, existence of translated points follows immediately from Chekanov's theorem on critical points of quasi-functions and Bhupal's graph construction. In this article we prove that if \phi is positive then there are infinitely many non-trivial geometrically distinct iterated translated points, i.e. translated points of some iteration \phi^k. This result can be seen as a (partial) contact analogue of the result of Viterbo on existence of infinitely many iterated fixed points for compactly supported Hamiltonian symplectomorphisms of R^{2n}, and is obtained with generating functions techniques in the setting of arXiv:0901.3112.Comment: 10 pages, revised version. I removed the discussion on linear growth of iterated translated points, because it contained a mistake. To appear in the International Journal of Mathematic