Symplectic embeddings of four-dimensional polydisks into balls (Q1748436)

Let \(P(a,b)\) be \(\{(z_1,z_2)\in\mathbb{C}^2| \pi|z_1|^2\leq a, \pi|z_2|^2\leq b\}\) and \(B(c)\) the ball of radius \(c\). Then the following theorem is proved. Theorem 1.4. Let \(2\leq a\leq \dfrac{\sqrt{7}-1}{\sqrt{7}-2}=2.54858\ldots\). If \(P(a,1)\) is symplectically embedded in \(B(c)\), then \(c\geq 2+\dfrac{a}{2}\). It is noted that the bound of \(c\) is optimal, and this bound was known for \(2\leq a\leq 2,4\), see [\textit{M. Hutchings}, ``Symplectic folding is sometimes optimal'', Preprint, \url{https://tinyurl.com/floerhomology20140916}]. The proof uses Hutchings criterion, that asserts that for any simplectic four manifold \(X\) with boundary, we can associate a sequence of real numbers \(0=c_0(X)\leq c_1(X)\leq c_2(X)\leq\cdots\) such that if \(X\) symplectically embeds into \(X'\), then \(c_k(X)\leq c_k(X')\) for all \(k\) [\textit{F. Bourgeois} (ed.) et al., Contact and symplectic topology. Proceedings of the CAST summer schools and conferences, Nantes, France, June 2011 and Budapest, Hungary, July 2012. Cham: Springer; Budapest: János Bolyai Mathematical Society (2014; Zbl 1286.53007)]. The numbers in this sequence are called embedded contact homology (ECH) capacities. Let \(\Omega\) be a domain in \(\mathbb{R}^2\) and \(X_\Omega=\{(z_1,z_2)| (\pi|z_1|^2,\pi|z_2|^2)\in\Omega\}\). Then \(P(a,b)=X_\Omega\), where \(\Omega\) is the rectangle with vertices \((0,0),(a,0),(0,b),(a,b)\). This observation suggests that ECH capacity has a combinatorial definition, which was shown in [\textit{M. Hutchings}, Geom. Topol. 20, No. 2, 1085--1126 (2016; Zbl 1338.53119)]. It was done via the study of a special path \(\Lambda\), called convex generator (Definition 1.8) and several numerical invariants derived from \(\Lambda\) by using contact homology and the area of the domain bounded by \(\Lambda\). In this paper, according to this line, a proof of the Hutchings criterion is given with an improvement that allows more convenient use of the Hutchings criterion (Theorem 1.17., Proposition 1.19 and Corollary 1.20). Then Theorem 1.4 is proved via a detailed calculation of the numerical invariants with the aid of Pick's theorem in \S3, the last section. Difficulties to extend Theorem 1.4 via the Hutchings criterion are explained in the appendix.