The geometry of symplectic energy (Q1842636)

Two new fundamental results in symplectic geometry/topology are proven in this paper: 1. For any symplectic manifold the generalized Hofer ``energy'' on the group of symplectic diffeomorphisms with compact support is a nondegenerate norm. Thus also the ``energy'' as defined by Hofer is a nondegenerate norm. 2. The nonsqueezing theorem for arbitrary symplectic manifolds: No symplectic manifold \(M\) can be symplectically embedded into a ``thin'' cylinder \(M \times B^2\), where \(B^2\) is a small 2-disc. These deep results are obtained directly by elegant geometric arguments, which allow to avoid generalization from the Euclidean case via the technique of pseudoholomorphic curves.