3.2 Solomon functional revisited [049J]
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3.2 Solomon functional revisited
Let be an almost Calabi-Yau Stein manifold, and be an exact Lagrangian brane, with for some suitable . Our goal is to suggest how the Solomon functional may be well defined without the universal cover issue, and extended beyond a given exact isotopy class. Both issues are essential for the variational approach to the Thomas-Yau conjecture, see Chapter 5.
Homological nature of the Solomon functional
Write the Liouville 1-form as , so , and the potential of the immersed Lagrangian as , so . We consider the potential as part of the brane data, so adding a constant to is viewed as a different Lagrangian brane. We shall consider a path of such Lagrangians , with associated Hamiltonian functions , so there is a preferred way to parallel transport , as recalled below.
Lemma 3.3.
| (19) |
Proof.
Let be the Hamiltonian vector field along associated to , namely . We calculate the time derivative of : along
so there is a preferred parallel transport of along the path ,
Hence
Now by the Cartan formula and the closedness of ,
so after integration by part,
Combining the above,
Integrating in gives the result. ∎
We observe that by the Kähler condition , so
This means the term is a homological quantity, in the sense that we can replace by any compactly supported -current with , which would automatically satisfy , since for Stein manifolds. In particular, this explains Solomon’s theorem that his functional is invariant under Hamiltonian deformations of the path of Lagrangians. The advantage of our homological interpretation is to allow more general currents , which in particular can come from families of holomorphic curves.
Proposed extension of the Solomon functional
Taking the homological interpretation of (19) as starting point, a natural way to extend the Solomon functional is to make use of the bordism current between an unobstructed Lagrangian and a fixed unobstructed reference Lagrangian . We have as currents, and comes from the universal family of holomorphic curves. Our proposed formula is
| (20) |
A few conceptual points are in order:
- •
We emphasize that this depends not only on the underlying Lagrangian, but also on the potential .
- •
There is no need to pass to any universal cover in the space of Lagrangians, as in Solomon’s work (cf. section 2.8).
- •
The topology of is no longer fixed, and in particular the Hamiltonian isotopy class may change.
- •
- •
Suppose we vary the Lagrangian within a 1-parameter exact isotopy family of unobstructed Lagrangians . The bordism currents between and satisfy
then the computation in Lem 3.3 proves the first variation formula for the Solomon functional
(21) which is of course the defining feature of the Solomon functional. Consequently, the formula (20) extends Solomon’s definition in our exact setting, and fixes the multivaluedness problem (i.e. the need to pass to universal covers) in Solomon’s work.
Change of reference Lagrangian
The definition of the Solomon functional depends on the reference Lagrangian , and we write when we wish to emphasize this dependence. The following feature of the Solomon functional resembles the Donaldson functional in the HYM context (cf. (9)):
Proposition 3.4.
Under the change of reference Lagrangians,
| (22) |
Proof.
We shall use the homological nature of the Solomon functional and the fact that . We pick such that
Then is homologous to , so we can replace by to compute , whence (22) follows. ∎
Remark 3.5.
A more Floer theoretic argument that is homologous to , which does not appeal to directly, can be sketched as follows. We assume are three unobstructed Lagrangians mutually isomorphic in , and . Of course, the self Floer cohomologies of are all isomorphic, and is a necessary condition if the class admits any almost calibrated representative at all. We consider representing the generators of , such that at the level of Floer cohomology
For simplicity we first assume almost calibratedness, so that , and there is no ambiguity for these generators. Notice the compositions provide generators of , , . Consider the -dimensional moduli spaces of holomorphic discs with corners at and the self intersection points corresponding to the bounding cochains. The corresponding universal family provides an -dimensional current, whose boundary comes from disc bubbling and disc breaking. Most of the boundary contributions are eliminated by the Mauer-Cartan equation of the bounding cochains, the closedness of , and support dimension reasons, and only three boundary contributions survive. These are the -dimensional bordism currents between (resp. and ) constructed from the universal family of holomorphic curves associated to the generators (resp. and ). We can identify these as . The upshot is that Floer theory explicitly provides the -dimensional current that exhibits the homological relation between and .
In general without assuming almost calibratedness, then can be nonzero. Then we need some extra -dimensional moduli spaces to account for the non-uniqueness of cohomological representatives of , an issue quite similar to section 3.1.2. A subtle new issue is that the moduli space receives new boundary contributions involving the products (this shorthand notation indicates the presence of bounding cochain elements, cf. (73)) of . The three cyclic permutations of produce three products, which are elements in and respectively, and the -dimensional moduli of polygons with one corner at the intersections and the other corners at bounding cochain elements contribute to . Now by the relation, and the closedness of ,
Writing and , we see is -closed, so by the assumption that , it is in fact for some . We can then produce an -dimensional moduli space, from polygons with a corner at , and other corners at the bounding cochain elements. Completely analogously, one can produce two other -dimensional moduli spaces from and . Combining the -dimensional universal families over the -dimensional moduli spaces, results in an explicit bordism current between and .