Invariant sets and spectral rigidity of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms

Abstract

We solve a well-known question of Polterovich from 2002 regarding the rigidity of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms in Hofer's metric in dimension two: every non-trivial Hamiltonian diffeomorphism of a surface of genus at least one has all positive iterations separated from the identity in Hofer's metric. In higher dimensions, we make progress on the case of autonomous Hamiltonian flows: we prove Hofer non-recurrence for symplectically hyperbolic manifolds, and completely characterize Hofer recurrence for functions of the moment polytope on monotone toric manifolds. These results apply equally well to Viterbo's spectral metric, settling cases of the $\gamma$-rigidity conjecture, and therefore in many cases also to the $C^0$-metric. Our approach relies on the philosophy that symplectically visible invariant sets govern symplectic non-recurrence phenomena. In dimension two, we use invariant annuli provided by low-dimensional dynamics, and apply methods of $C^0$ symplectic topology to approximately invariant Lagrangian submanifolds. For symplectically hyperbolic manifolds, the invariant sets are provided by sublevel and superlevel sets of autonomous Hamiltonians, while in the toric case, they comprise Lagrangian torus fibers. Across the arguments, we use quantitative Lagrangian Floer theory and its relation to notions of classical dynamics.