Cylindrical contact homology and topological entropy (Q511600)

A relation between the behaviour of cylindrical contact homology and the topological entropy of Reeb flows is established here. The topological entropy is a nonnegative number associated to a dynamical system which measures the complexity of the orbit structure of the system. Positivity of the topological entropy means that the system possesses some type of exponential instability. The main result states that if a contact manifold \((M,\xi)\) admits a hypertight contact form for which the cylindrical contact homology has exponential homotopical growth rate, then the Reeb flow of every contact form on \(M\) has positive topological entropy. This result yields new examples of contact 3-manifolds on which every Reeb flow has positive topological entropy. For example, the author shows the existence of 3-manifolds that admit infinitely many different contact structures on which every Reeb flow has positive topological entropy.