Une méthode de symplectisation des variétés de contact. (A method of symplectification of contact manifolds) (Q809434)

A general construction is explained for the symplectification of a contact manifold. If (Y,\(\omega\)) is a contact manifold with associated Reeb vector field \(\xi\), and (V,\(\epsilon\)) is a symplectic manifold, the author starts from a strictly positive function h on V to construct on \(Y\times V\) the pre-symplectic form \(\alpha =d(h\omega)-\epsilon\) (obvious pull-backs are omitted here). It is shown that the 1-dimensional kernel of \(\alpha\) on \(Y\times V\) is spanned by a vector field \(\eta\), which roughly is composed of \(\xi\) together with the Hamiltonian vector field associated to h on V. If the quotient M of \(Y\times V\) by \(\eta\) is a manifold, it has a natural symplectic structure \(\gamma\) which pulls back to \(\alpha\) ; (M,\(\gamma\)) is then said to be the symplectification of (Y,\(\omega\)) by (V,\(\epsilon\),h). This construction contains Arnold's symplectification of (Y,\(\omega\)), for which \(M=Y\times]0,\infty [\), as a special case. Various other interesting aspects are discussed, for example in situations where there is an appropriate symmetry group action on Y or on V, including, in particular, certain cases of interest in the theory of geometric quantization.