We introduce new invariants associated to collections of compact subsets of a symplectic manifold. They are defined through an elementary-looking variational problem involving Poisson brackets. The proof of the non-triviality of these invariants involves various flavors of Floer theory. We present applications to approximation theory on symplectic manifolds and to Hamiltonian dynamics.
This paper is a fusion of a survey and a research article. We focus on certain rigidity phenomena in function spaces associated to a symplectic manifold. Our starting point is a lower bound obtained in an earlier paper with Zapolsky for the uniform norm of the Poisson bracket of a pair of functions in terms of symplectic quasi-states. After a short review of the theory of symplectic quasi-states, we extend this bound to the case of iterated Poisson brackets. A new technical ingredient is the use of symplectic integrators. In addition, we discuss some applications to symplectic approximation theory and present a number of open problems.
We establish an infinitesimal version of fragility for squared Dehn twists around even dimensional Lagrangian spheres. The precise formulation involves twisting the Fukaya category by a closed two-form or bulk deforming it by a half-dimensional cycle. As our main application, we compute the twisted and bulk deformed symplectic cohomology of the subflexible Weinstein manifolds constructed in cite{murphysiegel}.
We give detailed descriptions of gluing pseudoholomorphic maps in symplectic geometry, especially in the presence of an obstruction bundle. The main motivation is to try to compare the symplectic and enumerative invariants of algebraic manifolds. These descriptions can also be used to enumerate rational curves with high-order degeneracies of local nature in projective spaces.
We present the Hamiltonian formalism for the Euler equation of symplectic fluids, introduce symplectic vorticity, and study related invariants. In particular, this allows one to extend D.Ebins long-time existence result for geodesics on the symplectomorphism group to metrics not necessarily compatible with the symplectic structure. We also study the dynamics of symplectic point vortices, describe their symmetry groups and integrability.
A log symplectic manifold is a complex manifold equipped with a complex symplectic form that has simple poles on a hypersurface. The possible singularities of such a hypersurface are heavily constrained. We introduce the notion of an elliptic point of a log symplectic structure, which is a singular point at which a natural transversality condition involving the modular vector field is satisfied, and we prove a local normal form for such points that involves the simple elliptic surface singularities $tilde{E}_6,tilde{E}_7$ and $tilde{E}_8$. Our main application is to the classification of Poisson brackets on Fano fourfolds. For example, we show that Feigin and Odesskiis Poisson structures of type $q_{5,1}$ are the only log symplectic structures on projective four-space whose singular points are all elliptic.