Non-negative Legendrian isotopy in \(ST^{\ast}M\) (Q982159)

Let \(M\) be a connected not necessarily orientable manifold of dimension \(m\) and let \(\pi_ M:ST^*M\to M\) be its spherical cotangent bundle. It is well-known that \(ST^*M\) carries a canonical co-oriented contact structure. An isotopy \(\{L_ t\}_{t\in[0,1]}\) of Legendrian submanifolds in a co-oriented contact manifold is called non-negative if it can be parameterized in such a way that the tangent vectors of the trajectories of individual points lie in the non-negative tangent half-spaces defined by the contact structure. In this paper, the authors prove that if the universal cover of a manifold \(M\) is an open manifold, then two different fibres of the spherical cotangent bundle \(ST^{\ast}M\) cannot be connected by a non-negative Legendrian isotopy. This result is applied to the study of causality in globally hyperbolic space-times. It is also used to strengthen a result of Eliashberg, Kim and Polterovich on the existence of a partial order on the universal cover \(\widetilde{\text{Cont}}_0 (ST^{\ast}M)\) of the identity component \(\text{Cont}_ 0(ST^{\ast}M)\) of the group of compactly supported contactomorphisms of the connected contact manifold \(ST^{\ast}M\).