The Maslov cycle as a Legendre singularity and projection of a wavefront set (Q2015836)
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English | The Maslov cycle as a Legendre singularity and projection of a wavefront set |
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The Maslov cycle as a Legendre singularity and projection of a wavefront set (English)
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24 June 2014
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Let \(V\) be a symplectic vector space, and \(\Lambda(V)\) its Grassmannian of Lagrangian subspaces. This paper is about \textit{Maslov cycles}: subsets \(\Sigma \subset \Lambda(V)\) of those \(L \in \Lambda(V)\) which have nonzero intersection with a fixed element \(L_0 \in \Lambda(V)\). The author first defines a smooth, closed, Lagrangian submanifold \(\mathcal{S}\) of the cotangent bundle \(T^*\Lambda(V)\) minus the zero section, whose projection to \(\Lambda(V)\) equals a given Maslov cycle \(\Sigma\). He then realises the manifold \(\mathcal{S}\) as the wave front set of a Fourier integral distribution \(\phi\). The definition of this distribution involves a line bundle \(E \to \Lambda(V)\), obtained via geometric quantisation of the Lagrangian subspaces of \(V\). The fibres of this bundle are pure symplectic spinors. Outside \(\Sigma\), the distribution \(\phi\) is given by evaluating these pure symplectic spinors at zero. This turns out to define a local \(L^1\) section of the dual of \(E\) tensored with an appropriate half-density bundle. It therefore extends to a distributional section on all of \(\Lambda(V)\). The principal symbol of \(\phi\) is given by a constant function. Finally, the author shows that the Maslov class of \(\mathcal{S}\), a distinguished class in \(H^1(\mathcal{S}, \mathbb Z)\), is the pullback of the Maslov class of \(\Lambda(V)\) along the cotangent bundle projection. The author views these results on Maslov cycles as a motivating example of the idea that operations on distributions that are a priori impossible (such as pullbacks), can possibly be realised as distributions on spaces of distributions (which may involve the structure of such spaces as diffeological spaces). In the setting of this paper, this applies to the pullback of the distribution defined by evaluating pure spinors at zero, as described above.
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symplectic vector space
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Lagrangian Grassmannian
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Fourier integral distribution
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Maslov cycle
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