Lengths of contact isotopies and extensions of the Hofer metric (Q2505236)

Assume that \((M,\Omega)\) is symplectic manifold and that \(\phi\) is a symplectic diffeomorphism of \((M,\Omega)\), generated by a compactly supported time-dependent Hamiltonian function, in other words, \(\phi\) is the time one map of the symplectic gradient of the Hamiltonian. \textit{H. Hofer} [Proc. R. Soc. Edinb., Sect. A 115, 25--38 (1990; Zbl 0713.58004)] defined the energy \(\| \phi\| _ H\) of \(\phi\) as the infimum of the total variation of Hamiltonian functions generating \(\phi\) and showed that it is a conjugation-invariant norm for the standard Euclidean space. This result was extended by \textit{F. Lalonde} and \textit{D. McDuff} [Ann. Math. (2) 141, No. 2, 349--371 (1995; Zbl 0829.53025)] to arbitrary symplectic manifolds. In this paper, the authors generalize Hofer's metric to diffeomorphism groups which are related to Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms. Let \((M,\alpha)\) be a compact, connected regular contact manifold and \(G_\alpha (M)\) the identity component in the group of strictly contact diffeomorphisms. Using the Hofer metric, the authors define the contact length of a strictly contact isotopy and construct a natural surjective homomorphism \(c\) from the universal covering of \(G_\alpha (M)\) into \(\mathbb{R}\). Then, they prove that if \(c(\pi _1(G_\alpha (M)))=\mathbb{Z}\), the distance induced on \(G_\alpha (M)\) by the contact energy is a bi-invariant distance. Moreover, let Ham\((M)\) denote the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms with compact support in \((M,\Omega)\). Let us denote also by \(G_\Omega(M)\) the identity component in the group of symplectic diffeomorphisms. If \(H^1(M,\mathbb{R})\neq 0\), these groups are distinguished by the Calabi invariant \(S:G_\Omega(M)\rightarrow H^1(M,\mathbb{R})/\Gamma\) where \(\Gamma\) is the Calabi subgroup of \(H^1(M,\mathbb{R})\). The authors prove that if \(S\) admits a continuous homomorphic right inverse, then the Hofer distance on Ham\((M)\) admits a right invariant (but not left invariant) extension on \(G_\Omega(M)\).