Bounds on spectral norms and barcodes (Q2078913)

The paper under review investigates relations between algebraic structures, spectral invariants and persistence modules in monotone Lagrangian Floer homology. For each \(r\in \mathbb Z\) we obtain a persistence module \(V_r(L,H)\) as the homology of the Lagrangian Floer complex generated by Hamiltonian chords of action bounded from above by \(r\). In the absolute case we obtain persistence modules \(V_r(H)\) as the homology of the Hamiltonian Floer complex generated by Hamiltonian orbits of action bounded above by \(r\). Persistence modules \(V\) can be recovered up to isomorphism by their barcode \(\mathcal B(V)\) which is a multiset containing pairs \((I_j,m_j)\) of intervals \(I_j \subset \mathbb R\) and integers \(m_j\in \mathbb R\). The boundary depth \(\beta(L,H)\) (and \(\beta(H)\)) of the persistence module \(V_r(L,H)\) (and \(V_r(H)\)) is defined as the maximal length of a finite bar in \(\mathcal B(V_r(L,H))\) (and \(\mathcal B(V_r(H))\)), respectively. Given a suitable choice of Novikov coefficients \(\varLambda\) we have maps \(p^{r,\infty}_{H} \colon V_r(H) \longrightarrow QH(M; \varLambda)\) and \(p^{r,\infty}_{L,H} \colon V_r(L,H) \longrightarrow QH(L; \varLambda)\) in view of the PSS isomorphisms. For \(a\in QH(L;\varLambda)\) (and \(a\in QH(M;\varLambda)\)) we define \begin{align*} c(L;a,H) := \inf_{t\in \mathbb R} \left\{t \mid a\in \operatorname{im}(p^{t,\infty}_{L,H})\right\}, \qquad c(a,H) := \inf_{t\in \mathbb R} \left\{t \mid a\in \operatorname{im}(p^{t,\infty}_{H})\right\}\, . \end{align*} Then define the Lagrangian (and Hamiltonian) spectral norms by \[ \gamma(L,H) := c(L;[L],H)+ c(L;[L],\overline H), \qquad \gamma(H) := c([M],H) + c([M], \overline H)\, , \] where \(\overline H\) is the Hamiltonian which generates the inverse flow of \(H\). The authors prove under the assumption that \(QH(L;\varLambda) \cong H(L;\varLambda)\) that we have the following bounds \[ \beta(L,H) \leq \gamma(L,H), \qquad \beta(H) \leq \gamma(H)\, . \] These are proved by showing that the spectral norm bounds the bottleneck distance on barcodes. Moreover it is shown that the spectral norm satisfies Chekanov-type low-energy intersection phenomena, and nondegeneracy theorems. They also produce precise upper bounds on the Lagrangian spectral norm using a new averaging method, which is shown to be sharp in some cases. Previously there were no known examples of weakly monotone Lagrangians with nontrivial Lagranigian Floer homology and finite least upper bound on the boundary depth \(\beta(L,H)\). The authors provide examples of this phenomenon by proving that the least upper bound of the boundary depth and Lagrangian spectral norms for \(\mathbb RP^n \subset \mathbb CP^n\) is bounded from above and below by a multiple of the area of \(\mathbb CP^1\). Other examples that are discussed include \(\mathbb CP^n\) (in the absolute case), an \(n\)-sphere in the smooth \(n\)-dimensional quadric \(Q \subset \mathbb CP^n\) and quaternionic projective space in the complex Grassmannian of complex \(2\)-planes in \(\mathbb C^{2n+2}\).