Helicity of vector fields preserving a regular contact form and topologically conjugate smooth dynamical systems

DOI10.1017/S0143385712000387zbMATH Open1284.37018arXiv1106.1968OpenAlexW2963557992MaRDI QIDQ2873997FDOQ2873997

Authors: Stefan Müller, Peter Spaeth 

Publication date: 28 January 2014

Published in: Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We compute the helicity of a vector field preserving a regular contact form on a closed three-dimensional manifold, and improve results by J.-M. Gambaudo and 'E. Ghys [GG97] relating the helicity of the suspension of a surface isotopy to the Calabi invariant of the latter. Based on these results, we provide positive answers to two questions posed by V. I. Arnold [Arn86]. In the presence of a regular contact form that is also preserved, the helicity extends to an invariant of an isotopy of volume preserving homeomorphisms, and is invariant under conjugation by volume preserving homeomorphisms. A similar statement also holds for suspensions of surface isotopies and surface diffeomorphisms. This requires the techniques of topological Hamiltonian and contact dynamics developed in [MO07, M"ul08b, Vit06, BS11b, BS11a, MS11]. Moreover, we generalize an example of H. Furstenberg [Fur61] of topologically conjugate but not C^1-conjugate area preserving diffeomorphisms of the two-torus to trivial T^2-bundles, and construct examples of Hamiltonian and contact vector fields that are topologically conjugate but not C^1-conjugate. Higher-dimensional helicities are considered briefly at the end of the paper.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.1968

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zbMATH Keywords

helicity of vector fieldsregular contact formtopologically conjugate smooth dynamical systems

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Topological and differentiable equivalence, conjugacy, moduli, classification of dynamical systems (37C15) Dynamical systems of geometric origin and hyperbolicity (geodesic and horocycle flows, etc.) (37D40) Almost contact and almost symplectic manifolds (53D15)

Cites Work

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Cited In (10)

• Helicity, linking and the distribution of null-homologous periodic orbits for Anosov flows*
• A new cohomological formula for helicity in \(\mathbb R^{2k+1}\) reveals the effect of a diffeomorphism on helicity
• Two proofs of Taubes' theorem on strictly ergodic flows
• Helicity is the only invariant of incompressible flows whose derivative is continuous in the \(C^1\) topology
• Topological contact dynamics. II: Topological automorphisms, contact homeomorphisms, and non-smooth contact dynamical systems
• Uniqueness of contact Hamiltonians of topological strictly contact isotopies
• Helicity is the only integral invariant of volume-preserving transformations
• Asymptotic invariants of 3-dimensional vector fields
• The helicity uniqueness conjecture in 3D hydrodynamics
• The trunkenness of a volume-preserving vector field

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