Maximum principles in symplectic homology (Q1717597)

A symplectic manifold \((M,\omega)\) is said to be convex at infinity if there is a compact domain \(M_1\subset M\) such that the complement of \(M_1\) is symplectomorphic to the positive part of the symplectization of a closed contact manifold \((M\backslash M_1,\omega)\cong(\Sigma\times(1,\infty),d(r\alpha))\), where \((\Sigma,\alpha)\) is a closed contact manifold and \(r\) denotes the coordinate on \([1,\infty)\). For such manifolds a version of Alexandrov maximum principle is needed to prevent Floer solutions from escaping to infinity. If Hamiltonians \(H_t\) on \(M\) are of the form \(H_t(x,r)=a r+b\) for large \(r\), then the \(r\)-component of a solution of the Floer equation is necessarily subharmonic, and this prevents such solutions from escaping to infinity. In [Geom. Topol. 20, No. 4, 1941--2052 (2016; Zbl 1348.53076)], \textit{A. Ritter} extended the class of Hamiltonians to those which are of the form \[ H_t(x,r)=rh_t(x)+b\tag{\(*\)} \] for large \(r\), where \(h_t:\Sigma\to\mathbb R\) is a function which is invariant under the Reeb flow of \(\alpha\). In this paper, the authors further generalize this and remove the hypothesis that \(h_t\) must be invariant under the Reeb flow. They prove that the maximum principle applies to all Hamiltonians of the form \((*)\). In [Adv. Math. 262, 1035--1106 (2014; Zbl 1294.53075)], \textit{A. Ritter} proved that if \((M,\omega)\) is a weakly\(^+\) monotone symplectic manifold which is convex at infinity and there exists a loop of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms generated by a Hamiltonian \(H_t:M\to\mathbb R\) which for large \(r\) is of the form \((*)\) such that \(h_t\) is invariant under the Reeb flow, then the summand of symplectic homology coming from contractible orbits can be seen as a quotient of the quantum homology of \(M\). The authors prove the same property without assuming that \(h_t\) is invariant under the Reeb flow. As an application, the authors detect elements of infinite order in the symplectic mapping class group of a Liouville domain and prove existence results for translated points.