\(J\)-holomorphic cylinders between ellipsoids in dimension four (Q2216148)

The authors study holomorphic cylinders in symplectic 4-dimensional ellipsoid cobordisms. For rationally independent reals \(0<a<b\) the symplectic ellipsoid is the 4-manifold \(E(a,b)=\{ \pi |z_1|^2/a + \pi |z_2|^2/b \}\) together with its standard symplectic form. Its boundary inherits a contact form with exactly two geometrically distinct Reeb orbits \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\) with periods \(a\) and \(b\). Symplectic ellipsoids form an interesting and much studied class of symplectic manifolds. In particular their embedding theory is rich and surprisingly deep, see for example [\textit{D. McDuff} and \textit{F. Schlenk}, Ann. Math. (2) 175, No. 3, 1191--1282 (2012; Zbl 1254.53111)]. A fruitful aproach to understand symplectic ellipsoids is to study homorphic curves in symplectic cobordisms between their contact boundaries. For that one takes a pair of symplectic ellipsoids \(E(a_1,b_1)\subset E(a_2,b_2)\) and considers the completion \(X\) of \(E(a_2,b_2)\setminus E(a_1,b_1)\) together with an admissible almost complex structure. The main result of the paper under review is that for a generic almost complex structure \(J\) on \(X\) and iterates of the short Reeb orbits \(\alpha_1^k\) and \(\alpha_2^l\) with the same sufficiently small Conley-Zehnder indices there exists a regular \(J\)-holomolomrphic cylinder in \(X\) from \(\alpha_1^k\) to \(\alpha_2^l\). On the other hand it is argued that such \(J\)-holomorphic cylinders do not exist for general Conley-Zehnder indices. However, a result by \textit{J. Pardon} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 32, No. 3, 825--919 (2019; Zbl 1422.53071)] implies that there always exists a \(J\)-holomorphic cylindrical building and in the paper under review a special case of Pardon's result is reproven.