On the topology of loops of contactomorphisms and Legendrians in non-orderable manifolds

Abstract

We study the global topology of the space $\mathcal L$ of loops of contactomorphisms of a non-orderable closed contact manifold $(M^{2n+1}, \alpha)$. We filter $\mathcal L$ by a quantitative measure of the ``positivity'' of the loops and describe the topology of $\mathcal L$ in terms of the subspaces of the filtration. In particular, we show that the homotopy groups of $\mathcal L$ are subgroups of the homotopy groups of the subspace of positive loops $\mathcal L^+$. We obtain analogous results for the space of loops of Legendrian submanifolds in $(M^{2n+1}, \alpha)$.