Spectral killers and Poisson bracket invariants (Q496243)

Let \(H\) be a Hamiltonian on a closed connected symplectic manifold \((M,\omega)\). The action level of a non-zero element of the quantum homology \(QH_{\ast}(M )\) is denoted by \(c(a,\omega)\) and called spectral invariant. If a is the class of \(M\), its spectral invariant is denoted by \(c(H)\). Definition and basic properties of spectral invariants are reviewed in Section 2. If the support of \(H\) is contained in a disjoint union \(U_1 \cup \dots\cup U_N \), where each \(U_i\) is a displaceable open ball, then \(c(H) = \sum c(H_i ), H_i = H|U_i\). Since \(|c(H_i )| \leq E(\text{supp}(H))\), where \(E(U )\) is the displacement energy of \(U\), the estimate \(|c(H)| \leq \sum_i E(U_i )\) is hold. \textit{L. Polterovich} asked in [ Commun. Math. Phys. 327, No. 2, 481--519 (2014; Zbl 1291.81198)] whether it is true that \(|c(H)| \leq \max|E(U_i )|\). Note that if \(U\) is symplectomorphic to the Euclidean ball \(B_r\) of radius \(r\), then \(E(U ) \geq \pi r^2\) [\textit{M. Usher}, Commun. Contemp. Math. 12, No. 3, 457--473 (2010; Zbl 1200.53077)]. In this paper, assuming \(M\) is monotone (i.e., \(\omega|_{\pi 2} = \lambda_{c{}_1} |_{\pi 2} \), for some real \(\lambda\), where \(c_1\) is the first Chern class of \(M\)), and each \(U_i\) is symplectomorphic to the Euclidean ball of radius \(r_i\), and that the \(U_i\)'s are displaceable with displacement energy \(E(U_i ) < \frac{|\lambda|}{2}\), then the estimate \[ 0 \leq c(H) \leq \pi r^2,\,\, r = \max\{r_1 ,\dots r_N \}, \] is shown (Theorem 2). This is optimal and Polterovich's question is answered affirmatively in this case. An example of monotone manifold is the projective space. To prove Theorem 2, a special class of functions \(K_{\varepsilon} , 0 < \varepsilon < \frac r4 \), which approximate the indicator functions of the shell \(\{z : r - 3\varepsilon \leq |z| \leq r - 2\varepsilon\}\) called spectral killers are used. It is shown that if \(U\) is displaceable with displacement energy \(E(U ) < \frac{|\lambda|}{2}\) , then \(c(H + K-\varepsilon ) = 0\) for any Hamiltonian \(H\) supported in \(B_{r- \varepsilon}\) (Theorem 7). The proof of Theorem 7 is the main part of this paper (Section 3) and uses discussions in [\textit{A. Oancea}, A survey of Floer homology for manifolds with contact type boundary or symplectic homology. Rio de Janeiro: Sociedade Brasileira de Matemática (2004; Zbl 1070.53056)]. To prove Theorem 2, spectral killers \(K_i\) for \(H_i , i = 1,\dots, N\) are used. By the continuity property and triangular inequality of spectral invariants (Proposition 12), we have \(c(H + \sum K_i ) = 0\) by Theorem 7. Hence we have \(c(H) = c(H + \sum K_i ) \leq \| \sum K_i \|_\infty\). Since \(\| \sum K_i \|_\infty = \pi r^2 \), this shows Theorem 2. As an application of Theorem 2, lower bounds for Poisson bracket invariants are given (Theorem 9).