Discontinuous symplectic capacities (Q480915)

Gromov's non-squeezing theorem can be a posteriori viewed as a definition and computation of the first symplectic capacity, as later introduced by Ekeland and Hofer. Gromov's capacity is based on symplectic embedding of the standard ball of maximal radius, but another spherical capacity \(s(V,\omega)\) can be introduced as the supremum of \(\pi r^2\) such that a neighbourhood of the standard \(S^{2n-1}_r\subset(\mathbb{R}^{2n},\omega_{\text{can}})\) can be symplectically embedded into \((V,\omega)\). The authors show that this capacity is not continuous on ellipsoidal shells. A modification of the spherical capacity, the shell capacity, is then shown to be also discontinuous on a family of open sets with smooth connected boundaries.