3.4 Positivity condition [04AU]
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3.4 Positivity condition
The -dimensional moduli spaces contributing to the bordism current come with orientation signs and weighting factors. The positivity condition (i.e. no cancellation of signs) means that around any automatically transverse curves, if the first order deformations form an oriented basis of the moduli space, and be a clockwise ordered vector field on , then upon boundary evaluation agrees with the orientation of . For the other holomorphic curves, the question of orientation does not arise, because the boundary evaluation maps have degenerate differentials everywhere on .
The positivity condition forbids two curves passing through a generic point with the evaluation maps contributing opposite signs. Such a requirement is geometric rather than homological, and if we go beyond the almost calibrated case, it also depends on the choice of the generators and , rather than only their classes in .
Question 5.
Given two unobstructed Lagrangian objects which are isomorphic in . When can we make gauge choices for the local systems and the bounding cochain data, and choices of the Floer cohomology group generators, such that the bordism current produced from the universal family of holomorphic curves satisfies the positivity condition?
The positivity condition will arise in the applications as follows. We will write various quantities as integrals over the -dimensional moduli spaces of holomorphic curves, and the positivity condition would in each case imply the pointwise positivity of the integrand. In the mirror analogy, this corresponds to the pointwise positivity of curvature integrands, which features for instance in the proof that the Hermitian Yang-Mills equation implies the semistability of bundles (cf. section 2.5).
Morse theory analogy
The intuition of the positivity condition can be explained through the following analogy with Morse theory. Given a compact oriented manifold with a Morse-Smale function , then
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The degree zero (resp. ) elements in the Morse cochain complex are generated by the local maxima (resp. local minima) of whose unstable submanifolds (resp. stable submanifolds) have preferred orientations.
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The fundamental class is represented by the sum of the local maxima with the preferred orientation. Similarly with the generator of .
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A generic point on lies on exactly one Morse flowlines which starts with one local maximum point and ends on one local minimum point. More formally, if we construct the universal family of Morse flowlines that start with some local maximum and ends on some local minimum, the evaluation map would sweep out the fundamental cycle of as an -dimensional current, without any cancellation effect.
Now for simplicity, if we start with an embedded Lagrangian brane , and preform a small generic Hamiltonian deformation , then the Floer cohomology is computed as the Morse cohomology, so the Morse theory statements above would imply the positivity condition at least in such special cases. The intuition is that if the Lagrangian (together with its brane structure) is a sufficiently small deformation of , then we expect the positivity condition to hold for the bordism current between and .
Positivity for individual moduli spaces
In general the bordism current receives contributions from many -dimensional moduli spaces of holomorphic curves. We now focus on one moduli space by fixing the choice of the Lagrangian intersections and the homotopy type of , and consider a connected open subset of the moduli space which contains only automatically transverse curves. We observe:
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For a fixed automatically transverse holomorphic curve , along between any two successive corners, by the nowhere vanishing of , the Jacobian of the boundary evaluation map cannot change sign. That is, either the orientation of the universal family agrees with the orientation of (resp. ) along at every point along the boundary portion of , or the two orientations disagree at every point.
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The Lagrangians are graded by assumption, and the orientations are canonically determined by . The corner behaviour (cf. Remark 3.7) implies that at the degree one self intersections, does not change sign. On the other hand, at the and the ends along , the 1-form changes orientation sign. Thus at a fixed automatically transverse curve, the orienation of the universal family and either completely agree along every point of , or completely disagree.
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As we deform among automatically transverse curves, the orientation signs cannot change. Thus either all these holomorphic curves contribute positively to , or they all contribute negatively.
The above discussion also suggests the limitation of the positivity condition: if we encounter a holomorphic curve in the moduli space, which is not automatically transverse, then it is possible to switch orientation signs. For arbitrary exact immersed Lagrangians, it seems unreasonable to expect the positivity condition, and it is conceivable that counterexamples may arise from -principle constructions. Whether counterexamples occur for more restrictive Lagrangians seems less clear, and we leave the following sample questions as food for thought:
Question 6.
How does the positivity condition behave under exact isotopy with surgery?
Question 7.
Are there examples of exact Calabi-Yau manifolds such that the positivity condition is satisfied for bordism currents between all exact, almost calibrated, unobstructed immersed Lagrangians equipped with suitable brane structures? What if the Lagrangians are quantitatively almost calibrated (cf. (3))?
Remark 3.9.
If the Fukaya category is defined over , we can require all holonomy factors to be integer valued. The positivity condition requires all the contributions to to have the same orientation sign. This has the amusing consequence that all holonomy factors associated with -dimensional moduli spaces contributing to , must in fact all be . Intuitively, this means there is a unique such holomorphic curve through any generic point of , and the boundary evaluation of universal family to is transverse.