Mayer-Vietoris property for relative symplectic cohomology (Q2024742)

The article under review is concerned with the construction of a symplectic invariant on closed symplectic manifolds, called relative symplectic cohomology, which is based on Hamiltonian Floer theory. Explicitly, denote by \((M, \omega)\) a symplectic manifold, \(K \subset M\) a compact subset, and \(\Lambda_{\geq 0}\) the Novikov ring defined as follows, \[ \Lambda_{\geq 0} = \left\{ \sum_{i \in \mathbb N} a_i T^{\alpha_i} \, \bigg| \, a_i \in \mathbb Q, \, \alpha_i \in \mathbb R_{\geq 0}, \, \,\text{ where }a_i \to \infty\text{ as }i \to \infty \right\}. \] Similarly, \(\Lambda_{>0}\) is an ideal of \(\Lambda_{\geq 0}\) with all exponents \(\alpha_i>0\). Relative symplectic cohomology, denoted by \(\mathrm{SH}_{M}(K)\) is a graded \(\Lambda_{\geq 0}\)-module that has a certain sheaf-like properties, for instance, the global section \(\mathrm{SH}_M(M) = H(M, \mathbb{Z}) \otimes_{\mathbb{Z}} \Lambda_{>0}\), the empty set \(\mathrm{SH}_{M}(\emptyset) = 0\), and for any \(K' \subset K\), there exists a restriction map \[ \mathrm{res}^{K}_{K'}: \mathrm{SH}_M(K) \to \mathrm{SH}_M(K'). \] More importantly, \(\mathrm{SH}_M(\cdot)\) satisfies the following Mayer-Vietoris property, \[ \begin{tikzcd} \mathrm{SH}_M(K_1 \cup K_2) \ar[r] & \mathrm{SH}_M(K_1) \oplus \mathrm{SH}_M(K_2) \ar[dl] \\ \mathrm{SH}_M(K_1 \cap K_2)\ar[u, "{[1]}"] & \end{tikzcd} \] if \(K_1\) and \(K_2\) are compact domains with boundaries in \(M\) and satisfy some topological constraint, for instance, \(\partial K_1 \cap \partial K_2 = \emptyset\) when \(\dim(M) =2\). Finally, the importance of \(\mathrm{SH}_M(K)\) in terms of symplectic geometry is that it can be used to detect the displaceability (by a Hamiltonian diffeomorphism) of \(K\) in \(M\), which is a fundamental question in symplectic geometry. Namely, if \(K\) is displaceable, then \(\mathrm{SH}_M(K) \otimes_{\Lambda_{\geq 0}} \Lambda = 0\). The construction of \(\mathrm{SH}_M(K)\) starts from a certain increasing family of Hamiltonian functions \(\{H_i\}_{i \in \mathbb N}\) that approximates an indicator function of \(K\), that is, \[ H_\infty = \begin{cases} 0 \,\,& \text{ on }K \\ +\infty \,\, & \text{ on }M \backslash K. \end{cases} \] Then \(\mathrm{SH}_M(K)\) is defined as the cohomology of a certain (double) limit of the truncated (at level \(r \geq 0\)) Hamiltonian Floer cochain complex denoted by \(\mathrm{CF}(H_i) \otimes_{\Lambda_{\geq 0}} \Lambda_{[0,r)}\) where \(\Lambda_{[0,r)} : = \Lambda_{\geq 0}/T^r \Lambda_{\geq 0}\). The first (direct) limit is taken from the Floer continuation map \[ \mathrm{CF}(H_i) \otimes_{\Lambda_{\geq 0}} \Lambda_{[0,r)} \to\mathrm{CF}(H_{i+1}) \otimes_{\Lambda_{\geq 0}} \Lambda_{[0,r)} \] induced via a (in fact, any) monotone homotopy from \(H_i\) to \(H_{i+1}\), and the second (inverse) limit is taken over \(r \in \mathbb R_{\geq 0}\) induced from the natural map \(\Lambda_{[0,s)} \to \Lambda_{[0,r)}\) when \(r \leq s\), namely, the completion of a \(\Lambda_{\geq 0}\)-module with respect to the filtration given by \(\{T^r\Lambda_{\geq 0}\}_{r \geq 0}\). The verifications of the well-definedness of \(\mathrm{SH}_M(K)\) as well as its properties can be neatly phrased in the language of cubes and its related algebraic operators that encode higher homotopy relations. The construction above can be regarded as an analogue of the classical symplectic (co)homology of domains in an open symplectic manifold which was invented in [\textit{C. Viterbo}, Geom. Funct. Anal. 9, No. 5, 985--1033 (1999, Zbl 0954.57015); \textit{K. Cieliebak} et al., Math. Z. 218, No. 1, 103--122 (1995; Zbl 0869.58011)].