Staircase symmetries in Hirzebruch surfaces (Q6065486)

Recently, \textit{M. Bertozzi} et al. [Assoc. Women Math. Ser. 27, 47--157 (2021; Zbl 1512.53080)] studied the rich quantitative and numerical structures found in the so-called ellipsoid embedding function of the symplectic Hirzebruch surface \(H_b := \mathbb CP^2 \# \overline{\mathbb CP}^2(b)\) where \(\mathbb CP^2(b)\) denotes the projective plane with weight \(b \in [0,1)\). For a real number \(\lambda\), let \(\lambda X := (X, \lambda \omega)\) and define the ellipsoid \(E(c,d) \subset \mathbb{C}^2\) to be the set \[ E(c,d) = \left\{(\zeta_1,\zeta_2) \in \mathbb C^2 \mid \pi \left(\frac{|\zeta_1|^2}{c} + \frac{|\zeta_2|^2}{d}\right) < 1\right\}. \] The ellipsoid embedding function is \[ c_X(z) := \inf \left\{\lambda \mid \text{there is a symplectic embedding } E(1,z) \hookrightarrow \lambda X\right\}. \] The study of the ellipsoid embedding function was initiated by \textit{D. McDuff} and \textit{F. Schlenk} [Ann. Math. (2) 175, No. 3, 1191--1282 (2012; Zbl 1254.53111)] in the case of \(B^4\). The graph of the ellipsoid embedding function is sometimes a piecewise linear function that resembles an infinite staircase, accumulating at certain values. The paper under review discusses symmetries in the set of parameters \(b \in [0,1)\) for which \(c_{H_b}(z)\) admits an infinite staircase. There are six families of infinite staircases \(\mathcal S^U_{\ell}\) \(\mathcal S^U_{u}\), \(\mathcal S^L_{\ell}\), \(\mathcal S^L_u\), \(\mathcal S^E_\ell\) and \(\mathcal S^E_u\) indexed by \(n \geq 0\). The values of \(b\) that corresponds to these families appear as the boundaries of certain intervals \(J_{\boldsymbol B} = (\beta_{\boldsymbol B,\ell},\beta_{\boldsymbol B,u}) \subset (0,1)\) that correspond to three so-called center-blocking classes \(\boldsymbol B^U_n\), \(\boldsymbol B^L_n\) and \(\boldsymbol B^E_n\) for \(n \geq 0\). Define shift and reflection functions \[ S \left(\frac pq\right) := \frac{6p-q}{p}, \qquad R \left(\frac pq\right) := \frac{6p-35}{p-6q}. \] The main result of the paper under review is that for each \(i\geq 1\), there are staircase families \((S^i)^\#(\mathcal S^U)\) and \((S^i)^\#(\mathcal S^L)\) that are obtained by acting with \(S\) and \(R\) on the centers of the blocking classes \(\boldsymbol B^U_n\) and \(\boldsymbol B^L_n\), respectively. Moreover \((S^i)^\#(\mathcal S^L) = (S^iR)^\#(\mathcal S^U)\).