Applications of Hofer's geometry to Hamiltonian dynamics (Q2494176)

Summary: We prove that for every subset \(A\) of a tame symplectic manifold \((W,\omega)\) meeting a semi-positivity condition, the \(\pi_1\)-sensitive Hofer-Zehnder capacity of \(A\) is not greater than four times the stable displacement energy of \(A\), \[ c_{HZ}^\circ(A,W)\leq 4e (A\times S^1, W\times T^*S^1). \] This estimate yields almost existence of periodic orbits near stably displaceable energy levels of time-independent Hamiltonian systems. Our main applications are: 1. The Weinstein conjecture holds true for every stably displaceable hypersurface of contact type in \((W,\omega)\). 2. The flow describing the motion of a charge on a closed Riemannian manifold subject to a non-vanishing magnetic field and a conservative force field has contractible periodic orbits at almost all sufficiently small energies. The proof of the above energy-capacity inequality combines a curve shortening procedure in Hofer geometry with the following detection mechanism for periodic orbits: If the ray \(\{\varphi_F^t \}\), \(t \geq 0\), of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms generated by a compactly supported time-independent Hamiltonian stops to be a minimal geodesic in its homotopy class, then a nonconstant contractible periodic orbit must appear.