The discriminant and oscillation lengths for contact and Legendrian isotopies (Q496462)

In the paper under review, the authors define an integer-valued non-degenerate bi-invariant metric on the universal cover of the identity component of the contactomorphism group of any contact manifold. They call this metric the discriminant metric. An important question about the discriminant metric is to understand for which contact manifolds it is unbounded. The authors prove the following results: {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize} \item[(a)] The discriminant metric is bounded for the standard contact structures on the Euclidean space \(\mathbb{R}^{2n+1}\) and on the sphere \(S^{2n+1}\)(in Section \(4\), using elementary arguments). \item [(b)] The discriminant metric is unbounded for the standard contact structure on \(\mathbb{R}^{2n}\times S^{1}\) (in Section \(6\), using generating functions). \item [(c)] The discriminant metric is unbounded for the standard contact structure on the projective space \(\mathbb{R}P^{2n+1}\) (in Section \(7\), using generating functions). \end{itemize}} In Section \(5\), using the fact that the discriminant metric is bounded on \(\mathbb{R}^{2n+1}\), it is proved that the contact fragmentation norm is always bounded below by twice the zigzag norm. In the last section, the authors discuss the Legendrian discriminant length.