Floer Homology - Symplectic Floer Homology

Symplectic Floer Homology

Symplectic Floer Homology (SFH) is a homology theory associated to a symplectic manifold and a nondegenerate symplectomorphism of it. If the symplectomorphism is Hamiltonian, the homology arises from studying the symplectic action functional on the (universal cover of the) free loop space of a symplectic manifold. SFH is invariant under Hamiltonian isotopy of the symplectomorphism.

Here, nondegeneracy means that 1 is not an eigenvalue of the derivative of the symplectomorphism at any of its fixed points. This condition implies that the fixed points will be isolated. SFH is the homology of the chain complex generated by the fixed points of such a symplectomorphism, where the differential counts certain pseudoholomorphic curves in the product of the real line and the mapping torus of the symplectomorphism. This itself is a symplectic manifold of dimension two greater than the original manifold. For an appropriate choice of almost complex structure, punctured holomorphic curves (of finite energy) in it have cylindrical ends asymptotic to the loops in the mapping torus corresponding to fixed points of the symplectomorphism. A relative index may be defined between pairs of fixed points, and the differential counts the number of holomorphic cylinders with relative index 1.

The symplectic Floer homology of a Hamiltonian symplectomorphism of a compact manifold is isomorphic to the singular homology of the underlying manifold. Thus, the sum of the Betti numbers of that manifold yields the lower bound predicted by one version of the Arnold conjecture for the number of fixed points for a nondegenerate symplectomorphism. The SFH of a Hamiltonian symplectomorphism also has a pair of pants product which is a deformed cup product equivalent to quantum cohomology. A version of the product also exists for non-exact symplectomorphisms.

For the cotangent bundle of a manifold M, the Floer homology depends on the choice of Hamiltonian due to its noncompactness. For Hamiltonians that are quadratic at infinity, the Floer homology is the singular homology of the free loop space of M (proofs of various versions of this statement are due to Viterbo, Salamon–Weber, Abbondandolo–Schwarz, and Cohen). There are more complicated operations on the Floer homology of a cotangent bundle that correspond to the string topology operations on the homology of the loop space of the underlying manifold.

The symplectic version of Floer homology figures in a crucial way in the formulation of the homological mirror symmetry conjecture.