Symplectic Geometry

We explain the geometric origin of the $L_{\infty}$-algebra controlling deformations of pre-symplectic structures.

In this paper, motivated by Chen--Ruan's stringy orbifold theory on almost complex orbifolds, we construct a new cohomology ring $\mathscr H^\ast_{G,cs}(X)$ for an equivariant almost complex pair $(X,G)$, where $X$ is a compact connected…

We obtain upper and lower bounds for the relative Gromov width of Lagrangian cobordisms between Legendrian submanifolds. Upper bounds arise from the existence of $J$-holomorphic disks with boundary on the Lagrangian cobordism that pass…

This note constructs sharp obstructions for stabilized symplectic embeddings of an ellipsoid into a ball, in the case when the initial four-dimensional ellipsoid has `eccentricity' of the form 3n-1 for some integer n.

We show that one can achieve transversality for lifts of holomorphic disks to a projectivized vector bundle by locally enlarging the structure group and considering the action of gauge transformations on the almost complex structure, which…

Here we extend the notion of target-local Gromov convergence of pseudoholomorphic curves to the case in which the target manifold is not compact, but rather is exhausted by compact neighborhoods. Under the assumption that the curves in…

In this paper we study the limit behavior of a family of chords on compact energy hypersurfaces of a family of Hamiltonians. Under the assumption that the energy hypersurfaces are all of contact type, we give results on the Omega limit set…

We survey the interactions between foliations and contact structures in dimension three, with an emphasis on sutured manifolds and invariants of sutured contact manifolds. This paper contains two original results: the fact that a closed…

We introduce a chain complex associated to a Liouville domain $(\overline{W}, d\lambda)$ whose boundary $Y$ admits a Boothby--Wang contact form (i.e. is a prequantization space). The differential counts cascades of Floer solutions in the…

We establish geometric criteria to decide whether a contact manifold is overtwisted. Starting with the original definition, we first relate the different overtwisted disks in each dimension and show that a manifold is overtwisted if the…

This document is a reorganization of the results on the Master Thesis of the same title written by the author under the supervision of Dr. Christian Blohmann at the University of Bonn in 2014. There are three main results in this document.…

We investigate Lie algebras endowed with a complex symplectic structure and develop a method, called \emph{complex symplectic oxidation}, to construct certain complex symplectic Lie algebras of dimension $4n+4$ from those of dimension $4n$.…

In this note, we prove that intrinsic characteristic classes of Lie algebroids - which in degree one recover the modular class - behave functorially with respect to arbitrary transverse maps, and in particular are weak Morita invariants. In…

We prove a conjecture of Viterbo from 2007 on the existence of a uniform bound on the Lagrangian spectral norm of Hamiltonian deformations of the zero section in unit cotangent disk bundles, for bases given by compact rank one symmetric…

Poisson structures of divisor-type are those whose degeneracy can be captured by a divisor ideal, which is a locally principal ideal sheaf with nowhere-dense quotient support. This is a large class of Poisson structures which includes all…

In this paper, viewing the symplectic linear group as a subset of the Lagrangian Grassmannian we extend the mean index to the complement of a codimension-two subset of the Grassmannian. This extension retains many of the desirable…

We apply Arnold's theory of generic smooth plane curves to Stark-Zeeman systems. This is a class of Hamiltonian dynamical systems that describes the dynamics of an electron in an external electric and magnetic field, and includes many…

A real Liouville domain is a Liouville domain together with an exact anti-symplectic involution. We call a real Liouville domain uniruled if there exists an invariant finite energy plane through every real point. Asymptotically an invariant…

We define symplectic fractional twists, which generalize Dehn twists, and use these in open books to investigate contact structures. The resulting contact structures are invariant under a circle action, and share several similarities with…

In this survey, we give an overview of Brieskorn manifolds and varieties, and their role in contact topology. We discuss open books, fillings and invariants such as contact and symplectic homology. We also present some new results involving…