Cancellation of obstructions [04HC]
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Cancellation of obstructions
To make sense of Floer cohomology one needs to cancel the obstructions by introducing bounding cochains , which represents a formal sum of associated to degree one intersection points . We require
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The Novikov positivity condition for each of the intersection points appearing in .
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The Mauer-Cartan equation
(72)
Geometrically, the coefficients of in the term represent the zero dimensional counts of holomorphic polygons with the inputs at the summands of , and the output at , weighted by the holonomy and orientation factors. Using the Novikov positivity requirement of the bounding cochain, the topological energy formula (66) for the polygon then implies
where the boundary of passes from to at in the clockwise direction. By Gromov compactness, this uniform energy bound implies there are only finitely many terms involved in the Mauer-Cartan equation. When such a bounding cochain exists, we say defines an unobstructed Lagrangian brane. In this case, both the Akaho-Joyce and the Woodward-Palmer approaches assign self Floer cohomology groups , defined as the cohomology of a degree one operator
This cohomology is invariant under global Hamiltonian deformations. Two bounding cochains on are said to be gauge equivalent, if there is satisfying the Novikov positivity condition, such that
Gauge equivalent bounding cochains give rise to isomorphic Floer cohomology.
Remark 6.13.
In the embedded case, there are no self intersections, so the Mauer-Cartan equation is vacuous, and the Lagrangian is automatically unobstructed, with zero bounding cochain. The unobstructed condition is not automatic in general for immersed Lagrangians, and a significant aspect of the Joyce program in [41] is that unobstructed Lagrangians ought to be better behaved in the LMCF.
Now suppose and are two unobstructed Lagrangian branes, intersecting transversally avoiding the self intersections of and . Then we can define the Floer cohomology . The Floer cochain space is the same as in the embedded case, generated by the local system factor tensored with the orientation factor, associated to the transverse intersection points. The Floer differential is
where the sum has insertions of , and insertions of . The coefficient of are morally defined by the weighted count of holomorphic polygons with boundary marked points mapping to the summands of , arranged in clockwise order. A similar a priori energy bound argument shows the sum is finite.
It is instructive to see why . We consider the breaking of one dimensional moduli spaces, associated with with . There are several mechanisms for disc bubbling and disc splittings:
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The polygon breaks into two parts, connected at a nodal point mapping to some with . The sum of all such contributions give rise to , and summing over produces .
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The polygon bubbles off a teardrop curve at a self intersection point of degree 2 on either or .
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The polygon splits into two parts, connected at a node mapping to a degree 2 self intersection point on either or .
The combined effect of the last two contributions, is a sum of the weighted counts of polygons with boundary mapping to multiplied by the coefficient of in in the case of (the case with gives an entirely similar contribution related to ). By the unobstructed assumption and , so these contributions vanish. But the grand sum of all contributions from all boundaries of the moduli spaces should be zero, which implies .
The generalization to many Lagrangians is a matter of bookkeeping. We have the compositions
| (73) |
In particular, this induces a product structure on Floer cohomology (with bounding cochains suppressed in the notation),
We say two unobstructed Lagrangian branes are isomorphic in , if there exist and , such that their compositions are the cohomological units: and .