Contact orderability up to conjugation (Q1702804)

The goal of the paper is to study a particular ordering on the conjugacy classes of contactomorphisms for the adjoint action. The manifolds taken into considerations are called by the authors \textit{convex at infinity}; they are a particular class of noncompact contact manifolds. This extends a previous work by two of the authors [Geom. Funct. Anal. 10, No. 6, 1448--1476 (2000; Zbl 0986.53036)] in which the partial order was defined on groups of contactomorphisms. The first section is devoted to specifying the conditions under which a partial ordering up to conjugation can be defined on a particular cone \(\mathfrak{g}^+\subseteq \text{Lie}(\text{Aut}_c(U))\) where \(U\) is a convex at infinity connected contact manifold, and the second section rephrases these conditions as a nonsqueezing result on some classes \(\mathfrak{C}_k\) of domains of \(\mathbb{R}^{2n}\) with the standard symplectic structure. These conditions could be seen as the main result of the paper (Theorems 1 and 2). The third section is devoted to prove such result, using the tools of symplectic homology introduced in [\textit{A. Floer} et al., Math. Z. 217, No. 4, 577--606 (1994; Zbl 0869.58012)]. In particular, the main issue consists in the computation of the symplectic homology of domains from \(\mathfrak{C}_k\). The last section shows how the partial ordering defines a pseudometric on the conjugacy classes of contactomorphisms of \(U\) and gives some of its properties. Also, some questions are posed for eventual future research. The exposition is reasonably self-contained, and the few parts in which a reference is needed are plainly marked. This makes the paper readable also to a non-expert with some knowledge of contact and symplectic geometry.