Birational equivalence in the symplectic category (Q1824872)

The geometry of the Marsden-Weinstein reduced phase spaces is studied for symplectic actions of the torus \(S^ 1\times S^ 1\). The first part of the article studies the special but typical case of ``blowing up'' \({\mathbb{C}}^ n\) at 0 as a symplectic manifold with reduction by \(S^ 1\times S^ 1\). It is shown that even if the level set has singularities the reduced phase space is nonsingular. Using tubular neighborhood techniques these constructions are globalized to general symplectic manifolds. Two related constructions - ``ramified coverings'' and ``real blowing up'' - are used to show that critical levels can be split into simple critical levels. The methods of the first part provide a normal form for simple critical points. This gives a description of the change of the symplectic structure of the reduced phase space \(M_ a\) as a passes through critical levels. The article motivates the notion of symplectic cobordism and the main results can be formulated: Every symplectic cobordism factors into a pair of simple cobordisms and there is a canonical symplectic model for simple cobordisms. The results can be made invariant under any compact group commuting with the \(S^ 1\times S^ 1\) action.