Nijenhuis operator in contact homology and descendant recursion in symplectic field theory

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the algebraic structure related to a new type of correlator associated to the moduli spaces of $S^1$-parametrized curves in contact homology and rational symplectic field theory. Such correlators are the natural generalization of the non-equivariant linearized contact homology differential (after Bourgeois-Oancea) and give rise to an invariant Nijenhuis (or hereditary) operator (\`a la Magri-Fuchssteiner) in contact homology which recovers the descendant theory from the primaries. We also sketch how such structure generalizes to the full SFT Poisson homology algebra to a (graded symmetric) bivector. The descendant hamiltonians satisfy to recursion relations, analogous to bihamiltonian recursion, with respect to the pair formed by the natural Poisson structure in SFT and such bivector. In case the target manifold is the product stable Hamiltonian structure $S^1\times M$, with $M$ a symplectic manifold, the recursion coincides with genus $0$ topological recursion relations in the Gromov-Witten theory of $M$.Comment: 30 pages, 3 figure