Legendrian persistence modules and dynamics (Q2125084)

The paper under review is at large concerned with existence of connecting trajectories of contact and symplectic Hamiltonian flows. Given a quadruple of subsets \((X_0,X_1,Y_0,Y_1)\) in a symplectic manifold \((M,\omega)\) satisfying \(X_0 \cap X_1 = Y_0 \cap Y_1 = \emptyset\) we say that a Hamiltonian \(H: M \times S^1 \longrightarrow \mathbb{R}\) separates \(Y_0\) and \(Y_1\) if \[ \Delta(H,Y_0,Y_1) := \inf_{Y_1 \times S^1} H - \sup_{Y_0 \times S^1} H > 0\, . \] Letting \(\mu > 0\) we say that \((Y_0,Y_1)\) \(\mu\)-interlinks \((X_0,X_1)\), if for every Hamiltonian \(H\) separating \(Y_0\) and \(Y_1\) there exists a chord of time-length \(\leq \mu/ \Delta\) from \(X_0\) to \(X_1\). The pair \((Y_0,Y_1)\) \emph{interlinks} \((X_0,X_1)\) if it \(\mu\)-interlinks it for some \(\mu > 0\). The authors of the paper under review mainly concentrate the special case of the symplectization \((\Sigma \times \mathbb{R}_+(s), d(s \lambda))\) of a (cooriented) contact manifold \((\Sigma, \lambda)\). The quadruple of interest is given by \(Y_0 = \left\{s = s_-\right\}\), \(Y_1 = \left\{s=s_+\right\}\) for some \(0 < s_- \leq s_+\), and \(X_i = \Lambda_i \times [s_-,s_+]\) for two disjoint Legendrian submanifolds \(\Lambda_0, \Lambda_1 \subset \Sigma\). The main result of the paper under review provides a sufficient condition for interlinking in terms of contact topology of the pair of Legendrians. The main tools used are Poisson bracket invariants and persistence modules. Existence of chords of Hamiltonian flows from positivity of Poisson bracket invariants is deduced from Fathi's ``dynamical Urysohn lemma''. The study of persistence modules of Legendrian contact homology and in particular existence of bars of sufficiently large multiplicative length in the barcode implies positivity of the Poisson bracket invariant for appropriate quadruple of sets and thus existence of chords.