On growth rate and contact homology (Q2346715)

It was proved by \textit{C. H. Taubes} [Geom. Topol. 13, No. 3, 1337--1417 (2009; Zbl 1200.57018)] that every \(3\)-dimensional contact manifold has closed Reeb orbits (for each contact form). One may thus ask how the number \(N(L)\) of Reeb orbits of period \(\leq L\) grows with \(L\). The paper under review contributes to this question in the case of closed, irreducible \(3\)-manifolds that have a nontrivial JSJ-decomposition with at least one fibered hyperbolic piece. It is shown that there is an infinite number of hypertight, universally tight contact structures such that (under some assumption on the contact form) \(N(L)\) grows exponentially with \(L\). (``Universally tight'' means that the universal cover is tight and ``hypertight'' means that for some contact form there is no contractible periodic orbit. Both conditions imply tightness.) The proof uses cylindrical contact homology as considered by \textit{F. Bourgeois} and \textit{V. Colin} [ibid. 9, 299--313 (2005; Zbl 1077.53070)]. This is defined as the homology of the complex of ``good'' periodic orbits with some geometrically defined boundary operator. It has a natural filtration by considering for \(L\in{\mathbb R}_+\) the subcomplex generated by orbits of period \(\leq L\) only. The growth of the dimensions of the so-defined homology groups (as a function of \(L\)) provides a lower bound for the growth of \(N(L)\) and so the main part of the paper under review is devoted to proving several results about the cylindrical contact homology and its growth rate.