Relative Hofer-Zehnder capacity and periodic orbits in twisted cotangent bundles (Q1885552)

One of the most important results in symplectic topology and Hamiltonian system is \textit{C. Viterbo's} almost existence theorem [``A proof of Weinstein's conjecture in \(R^{2n}\)\,'', Ann. Inst. H. Poincaré, Anal. Non Linéaire 4, 337--356 (1987; Zbl 0631.58013)]. The almost existence theorem has been extended to a broad class of symplectic manifolds by many authors. The paper under review provides a relative version of the almost existence theorem for periodic orbits of autonomous Hamiltonian systems. The scheme is similar to the original approach. Let \(F\) be a function on a geometrically bounded symplectic aspherical manifold \(W\), with its minimum \(0\) attained along a closed symplectic submanifold \(M\). The relative almost existence theorem states that the levels \(F=\varepsilon\) carry contractible periodic orbits of the Hamiltonian flow of \(F\) for almost all small \(\varepsilon > 0\). The key step to prove the relative almost existence theorem is theorem 2.4, which shows that the flow of a Hamiltonian with sufficiently large variation has a nontrivial contractible one-periodic orbit. The method to prove such a result is to show the nonvanishing property for the Floer homology. The technique point lies in the proof of proposition 5.2 which provides the nontriviality in the Floer homology. The Floer homology is the new ingredient in the proof and it applies to symplectic aspherical and geometrically bounded symplectic manifolds. The Floer homology defined by \textit{K. Cieliebak, A. Floer} and \textit{H. Hofer} [``Symplectic homology. II: A general construction'', Math. Z. 218, 103--122 (1995; Zbl 0869.58011)] is the homology of relative Morse complex of the symplectic action on the space of all contractible loops. The paper considers only nonzero action critical points (page 18). For any pair of regular values \(a, b\), the Floer homology \(HF^{[a, b)}(H)\) of the Hamiltonian \(H\) is well-defined and with monotone homotopy invariance property. For \(a < b < c\), there is a long exact sequence of Floer homologies arising from the short exact sequence \(0\to CF^{[a,b)} \to CF^{[a, c)} \to CF^{[b,c)} \to 0\). The calculation of Floer homology is based on a theorem of Poźniak which equates the filtered Floer homology and the ordinary homology of a connected Morse-Bott nondegenerate set of periodic orbits (for nonvanishing result). The lemma 4.4 is proved by the homology argument and by using the long exact sequence of Floer homology. The authors apply the long exact sequence for Morse-Bott critical submanifolds which has not been proved in the existing literature. The proof of theorem 2.4 is based on an explicit and detailed construction of two Hamiltonians \(K_{\pm}\). The section 5.2 provides a good account on the explicit construction \(K_- < H < K_+\) to squeeze the nonvanishing property of the Floer homology for the Hamiltonian \(H\). The next task is to use systematically the relative Hofer-Zehnder capacity. The relative version has been studied by Lalonde, Hofer and Viterbo and Liu and Tian before. Then the relative almost existence theorem (theorem 2.14) and its proof follow exactly from the proof of the standard almost existence theorem. The invariance, monotonicity, homogeneity, normalization for the relative capacity are established in theorem 2.11. The relative version can be reduced to the standard HZ-capacity which relaxes the condition on having \(H\) vanishing on an open set or attaining its maximal on the complement of a compact set. Note that theorem 2.4 provides one-periodic orbits which guarantees the finiteness of the capacity of a small neighborhood of \(M\) relative to \(M\). The almost existence theorem follows from the fact that the relative capacity of \(\{F < \varepsilon\}\) is an increasing function of \(\varepsilon > 0\). In the last section, the authors constructed some counterexamples to statements obtained by dropping some hypotheses in the theorems. Proposition 2.21 shows that the almost existence theorem fails if the minimum of \(H\) is degenerate for \(\mathbb R^{2n}=W\). Proposition 2.23 shows that there exists a Hamiltonian on \(T^*S^n\) for which the almost existence theorem fails, which indicates that the contact-type condition for the Weinstein conjecture in the cotangent bundle cannot be omitted. The last example is \(T^*\mathbb CP^n\) for which the almost existence theorem fails since \(T^*\mathbb CP^n\) is not symplectic aspherical.