Kahler geometry of toric varieties and extremal metrics

Recently Guillemin gave an explicit combinatorial way of constructing "toric" Kahler metrics on (symplectic) toric varieties, using only data on the moment polytope. In this paper, differential geometric properties of these metrics are investigated using Guillemin's construction. In particular, a nice combinatorial formula for the scalar curvature is given, and the Euler-Lagrange condition for such "toric" metrics being extremal (in the sense of Calabi) is derived. A construction, due to Calabi, of a 1-parameter family of extremal metrics of non-constant scalar curvature is recast very simply and explicitly. Finally, a curious combinatorial formula for convex polytopes, that follows from the relation between the total integral of the scalar curvature and the wedge product of the first Chern class with a suitable power of the Kahler class, is presented.Comment: 12 pages, submitted to International Journal of Mathematic

Toric Kahler Metrics: Cohomogeneity One Examples of Constant Scalar Curvature in Action-Angle Coordinates

In these notes, after an introduction to toric Kahler geometry, we present Calabi's family of U(n)-invariant extremal Kahler metrics in symplectic action-angle coordinates and show that it actually contains, as particular cases, many interesting cohomogeneity one examples of constant scalar curvature.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure, for the proceedings of the XI International Conference on Geometry, Integrability and Quantization, Varna, Bulgaria, June 5--10, 200

Kahler metrics on toric orbifolds

A theorem of E.Lerman and S.Tolman, generalizing a result of T.Delzant, states that compact symplectic toric orbifolds are classified by their moment polytopes, together with a positive integer label attached to each of their facets. In this paper we use this result, and the existence of "global" action-angle coordinates, to give an effective parametrization of all compatible toric complex structures on a compact symplectic toric orbifold, by means of smooth functions on the corresponding moment polytope. This is equivalent to parametrizing all toric Kahler metrics and generalizes an analogous result for toric manifolds. A simple explicit description of interesting families of extremal Kahler metrics, arising from recent work of R.Bryant, is given as an application of the approach in this paper. The fact that in dimension four these metrics are self-dual and conformally Einstein is also discussed. This gives rise in particular to a one parameter family of self-dual Einstein metrics connecting the well known Eguchi-Hanson and Taub-NUT metrics.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure

Dynamical convexity and elliptic periodic orbits for Reeb flows

A long-standing conjecture in Hamiltonian Dynamics states that the Reeb flow of any convex hypersurface in $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$ carries an elliptic closed orbit. Two important contributions toward its proof were given by Ekeland in 1986 and Dell'Antonio-D'Onofrio-Ekeland in 1995 proving this for convex hypersurfaces satisfying suitable pinching conditions and for antipodal invariant convex hypersurfaces respectively. In this work we present a generalization of these results using contact homology and a notion of dynamical convexity first introduced by Hofer-Wysocki-Zehnder for tight contact forms on $S^3$. Applications include geodesic flows under pinching conditions, magnetic flows and toric contact manifolds.Comment: Version 1: 43 pages. Version 2: revised and improved exposition, corrected misprints, 44 pages. Version 3: final version, 46 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Mathematische Annale