K-area, Hofer metric and geometry of conjugacy classes in Lie groups. (Q5950707)

For a bi-invariant Finsler pseudo-metric on a Lie group \(G\) and a tuple of conjugacy classes \(C = (C_1, \ldots,C_l)\), define \[ \Upsilon_l(C) = \inf_{\phi_i \in C_i}(id,\phi_1,\ldots,\phi_l). \] The main result of the present paper uses this invariant to bound the action functional on contractible time-\(1\) periodic trajectories of Hamiltonian flows (in fact, the action used is a generalization of this). More precisely, let \(H=(H_1, \ldots,H_l)\) be an \(l\)-tuple of time-dependent Hamiltonians on a symplectic manifold \(M\) and let \(C_H = (C_{H_1}, \ldots,C_{H_l})\) be the corresponding conjugacy classes in the universal covering group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms \(\widetilde{\text{Ham}}(M,\omega)\). Then for any durable loop \(\gamma\), \(\Upsilon_l(C_H) \geq A_H (\gamma)\), where \(A_H\) is the action. Moreover, the author shows that \(\Upsilon_l\) may be identified with the reciprocal of \(K\)-area. Various applications of the main result are given, including an application to the study of geodesics in \(\text{Ham}(M,\omega)\).