A polyfold proof of the Arnold conjecture (Q2056175)

This paper concerns with a famous conjecture by \textit{V. I. Arnol'd} in the 1960s that the minimal number of critical points of a Morse function on a closed symplectic manifold \(M\) is also a lower bound for the number of periodic orbits of a nondegenerate Hamiltonian system [C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris 261, 3719--3722 (1965; Zbl 0134.42305)]. Arnold's conjecture has been proved for Riemann surfaces by \textit{Ya. M. Ehliashberg} [Funct. Anal. Appl. 21, No. 1--3, 227--232 (1987; Zbl 0655.58015); translation from Funkts. Anal. Prilozh. 21, No. 3, 65--72 (1987)] and tori by \textit{C. C. Conley} and \textit{E. Zehnder} [Invent. Math. 73, 33--49 (1983; Zbl 0516.58017)]. Later, \textit{A. Floer} introduced a weaker form of Arnold's conjecture in these two papers: [J. Differ. Geom. 28, No. 3, 513--547 (1988; Zbl 0674.57027); Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 41, No. 6, 775--813 (1988; Zbl 0633.53058)]. Indeed, Floer conjectured that every exact Hamiltonian vector field possesses as many 1-periodic solutions as a smooth function on the symplectic manifold has critical points, and proved the conjecture for compact oriented surfaces of genus greater than 2 as well as for Kähler manifolds. The main result by Floer is the following: \textbf{Theorem}. Let \((M, \omega)\) be a closed symplectic manifold and \(H : S^1 \times M \longrightarrow \mathbb{R}\) a nondegenerate periodic Hamiltonian function. Then \[ \sharp P(H) \geq \sum_{i=0}^{\dim \, M} \; \dim \, H_i (M; \mathbb{Q}). \] Here, \(P(H)\) is the set of contractible periodic orbits. In the present paper, the authors give an alternative proof of the above theorem using an abstract perturbation scheme provided by the polyfold theory of \textit{H. Hofer} et al. [``Polyfold and Fredholm theory'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1707.08941}], following an approach by \textit{S. Piunikhin} et al. [in: Contact and symplectic geometry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 171--200 (1996; Zbl 0874.53031)]. (This is part of the so-called Symplectic Field Theory.)