A field theory for symplectic fibrations over surfaces (Q1882846)

The paper constructs a field theory for Hamiltonian fibrations over compact oriented surfaces with interior marked points and boundaries. To each boundary component of the surface, one assigns a Floer homology, and to each marked point one assigns the quantum homology of the fiber over that point. Then, for each partition of the set of interior marked points and boundary components (into ``ingoing'' and ``outgoing'' subsets) the author defines a morphism from the tensor product of ``ingoing'' quantum and Floer homologies to the tensor product of ``outgoing'' ones. Such morphism generalizes the one introduced in [\textit{S. Piunikhin, D. Salamon} and \textit{M. Schwarz}, ``Symplectic Floer-Donaldson theory and quantum cohomology,'' Thomas, C. B. (ed.), Contact and symplectic geometry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Publ. Newton Inst. 8, 171--200 (1996; Zbl 0874.53031)], and it also includes as special cases the Seidel homomorphism [\textit{P. Seidel}, Geom. Funct. Anal. 7, No. 6, 1046--1095 (1997; Zbl 0928.53042)] (when the base is \(S^2\) with two marked points) and the usual isomorphism between quantum and Floer homologies. Finally, it is shown that the gluing of such Hamiltonian fibrations corresponds to the composition of morphisms. The precise definitions of the objects and morphisms of this field theory, as well as the composition formula, can be found in Section 2; In Section 3 the author discusses applications to the problem of minimizing geodesics in Hofer's geometry; the last section (Section 4) contains an independent discussion of a semi-norm of higher genus on the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms along with a conjecture relating it to the Hofer norm.