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Yael Karshon

Publications and source records attributed to Yael Karshon.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Symplectic torus actions with non-contractible orbits

We prove that a symplectic $T^{n-1}$ action on a closed connected $2n$-dimensional symplectic manifold is Hamiltonian if and only if its orbits are contractible. This generalizes a result of Lalonde--McDuff--Polterovich on four-manifolds and theorems of McDuff and Kim on existence of fixed points. When the orbits are isotropic, we prove a stronger variant of this result, which implies non-extendability of certain symplectic circle actions on 6-manifolds to symplectic $T^2$ actions. Moreover, we prove that a symplectic $T^{n-1}$ action with isotropic orbits always splits into a maximal Hamiltonian action and a locally-free action. We end by posing several open questions on the topology of symplectic torus actions.

math.SG↗
arXiv2025

Integral points and volume of integral-integral affine manifolds

We give an elementary proof that, for a closed manifold with an integral-integral affine structure, its total volume and number of integral points coincide. The proof uses rational Ehrhart theory and elementary Fourier analysis to estimate the difference between the total volume and the number of integral points.

math.DG↗
arXiv2025

Classification of locally standard torus actions

An action of a torus T on a manifold M is locally standard if, at each point, the stabilizer is a sub-torus and the non-zero isotropy weights are a basis to its weight lattice. The quotient M/T is then a manifold-with-corners, decorated by a so-called unimodular labelling, which keeps track of the isotropy representations in M, and by a degree two cohomology class with coefficients in the integral lattice of the Lie algebra of T, which encodes the "twistedness" of M over M/T. We classify locally standard smooth actions of T, up to equivariant diffeomorphisms, in terms of triples (Q,lambda,c), where Q is a manifold-with-corners, lambda is a unimodular labelling, and c is a degree two cohomology class with coefficients in the integral lattice.

math.GT↗
arXiv2025

Weinstein neighbourhood theorems for stratified subspaces

By analogy with Weinstein's neighbourhood theorem, we prove a uniqueness result for symplectic neighbourhoods of a large family of stratified subspaces. This result generalizes existing constructions, e.g., in the search for exotic Lagrangians. Along the way, we prove a strong version of Moser's trick and a (non-symplectic) tubular neighbourhood theorem for these stratified subspaces.

math.SG↗
arXiv2024

Integral-integral affine geometry, geometric quantization, and Riemann-Roch

We give a simple proof that, for a pre-quantized compact symplectic manifold with a Lagrangian torus fibration, its Riemann-Roch number coincides with its number of Bohr-Sommerfeld fibres. This can be viewed as an instance of the "independence of polarization" phenomenon of geometric quantization. The base space for such a fibration acquires a so-called integral-integral affine structure. The proof uses the following simple fact, whose proof is trickier than we expected: on a compact integral-integral affine manifold, the total volume is equal to the number of integer points.

math.SG↗
arXiv2023

Vector Fields and Flows on Subcartesian Spaces

This paper is part of a series of papers on differential geometry of $C^\infty$-ringed spaces. In this paper, we study vector fields and their flows on a class of singular spaces. Our class includes arbitrary subspaces of manifolds, as well as symplectic and contact quotients by actions of compact Lie groups. We show that derivations of the $C^\infty$-ring of global smooth functions integrate to smooth flows.

math.DG↗
arXiv2023

Diffeological, Frölicher, and Differential Spaces

Differential calculus on Euclidean spaces has many generalisations. In particular, on a set $X$, a diffeological structure is given by maps from open subsets of Euclidean spaces to $X$, a differential structure is given by maps from $X$ to $\mathbb{R}$, and a Frölicher structure is given by maps from $\mathbb{R}$ to $X$ as well as maps from $X$ to $\mathbb{R}$. We illustrate the relations between these structures through examples.

math.DG↗
arXiv2023

Smooth maps on convex sets

There are several notions of a smooth map from a convex set to a cartesian space. Some of these notions coincide, but not all of them do. We construct a real-valued function on a convex subset of the plane that does not extend to a smooth function on any open neighbourhood of the convex set, but that for each $k$ extends to a $C^k$ function on an open neighbourhood of the convex set. It follows that the diffeological and Sikorski notions of smoothness on convex sets do not coincide. We show that, for a convex set that is locally closed, these notions do coincide. With the diffeological notion of smoothness for convex sets, we then show that the category of diffeological spaces is isomorphic to the category of so-called exhaustive Chen spaces.

math.DG↗
arXiv2022

Quasifold groupoids and diffeological quasifolds

Quasifolds are spaces that are locally modelled by quotients of $\mathbb{R}^n$ by countable affine group actions. These spaces first appeared in Elisa Prato's generalization of the Delzant construction, and special cases include leaf spaces of irrational linear flows on the torus, and orbifolds. We consider the category of diffeological quasifolds, which embeds in the category of diffeological spaces, and the bicategory of quasifold groupoids, which embeds in the bicategory of Lie groupoids, bibundles, and bibundle morphisms. We prove that, restricting to those morphisms that are locally invertible, and to quasifold groupoids that are effective, the functor taking a quasifold groupoid to its diffeological orbit space is an equivalence of the underlying categories. These results complete and extend earlier work with Masrour Zoghi.

math.DG↗
arXiv2022

Diffeological submanifolds and their friends

A smooth manifold hosts different types of submanifolds, including embedded, weakly-embedded, and immersed submanifolds. The notion of an immersed submanifold requires additional structure (namely, the choice of a topology); when this additional structure is unique, we call the subset a uniquely immersed submanifold. Diffeology provides yet another intrinsic notion of submanifold: a diffeological submanifold. We show that from a categorical perspective diffeology rises above the others: viewing manifolds as a concrete category over the category of sets, the initial morphisms are exactly the (diffeological) inductions, which are the diffeomorphisms with diffeological submanifolds. Moreover, if we view manifolds as a concrete category over the category of topological spaces, we recover Joris and Preissmann's notion of pseudo-immersions. We show that these notions are all different. In particular, a theorem of Joris from 1982 yields a diffeological submanifold whose inclusion is not an immersion, answering a question that was posed by Iglesias-Zemmour. We also characterize local inductions as those pseudo-immersions that are locally injective. In appendices, we review a proof of Joris' theorem, pointing at a flaw in one of the several other proofs that occur in the literature, and we illustrate how submanifolds inherit paracompactness from their ambient manifold.

math.DG↗
arXiv2021

Bott canonical basis?

Expanding an idea of Raoul Bott, we propose a construction of canonical bases for unitary representations that comes from big torus actions on families of Bott-Samelson manifolds. The construction depends only on the choices of a maximal torus, a Borel subgroup ,and a reduced expression for the longest element of the Weyl group. It relies on a conjectural vanishing of higher cohomology of sheaves of holomorphic sections of certain line bundles on the total spaces of the families, hence the question mark in the title.

math.RT↗
arXiv2021

Symplectic excision

We use time-independent incomplete Hamiltonian flows to excise interesting closed subsets of positive codimension from symplectic manifolds. Examples of such subsets include what we call a "Cantor brush", a "box with a tail", and -- more generally -- epigraphs of lower semicontinuous functions. This answers a question of Alan Weinstein about excision of a ray, and it generalizes a result of Bernd Stratmann about excision of the product of a ray with a manifold.

math.SG↗
arXiv2020

Functoriality for symplectic and contact cutting, and equivariant radial-squared blowups

We exhibit Lerman's cutting procedure as a functor from the category of manifolds-with-boundary equipped with free circle actions near the boundary, with so-called equivariant transverse maps, to the category of manifolds and smooth maps. We then apply the cutting procedure to differential forms that are not necessarily symplectic, to distributions that are not necessarily contact, and to submanifolds. We obtain an inverse functor from so-called equivariant radial-squared blowup.

math.SG↗
arXiv2020

Topology of complexity one quotients

We describe of the topology of the geometric quotients of 2n dimensional compact connected symplectic manifolds with n-1 dimensional torus actions. When the isotropy weights at each fixed point are in general position, the quotient is homeomorphic to a sphere.

math.SG↗
arXiv2020

Givental's non-linear Maslov index on lens spaces

Givental's non-linear Maslov index, constructed in 1990, is a quasimorphism on the universal cover of the identity component of the contactomorphism group of real projective space. This invariant was used by several authors to prove contact rigidity phenomena such as orderability, unboundedness of the discriminant and oscillation metrics, and a contact geometric version of the Arnold conjecture. In this article we give an analogue for lens spaces of Givental's construction and its applications.

math.SG↗
arXiv2016

The Morse-Bott-Kirwan condition is local

Kirwan identified a condition on a smooth function under which the usual techniques of Morse-Bott theory can be applied to this function. We prove that if a function satisfies this condition locally then it also satisfies the condition globally. As an application, we use the local normal form theorem to recover Kirwan's result that the norm-square of a momentum map satisfies Kirwan's condition.

math.SG↗
arXiv2016

Basic Forms and Orbit Spaces: a Diffeological Approach

If a Lie group acts on a manifold freely and properly, pulling back by the quotient map gives an isomorphism between the differential forms on the quotient manifold and the basic differential forms upstairs. We show that this result remains true for actions that are not necessarily free nor proper, as long as the identity component acts properly, where on the quotient space we take differential forms in the diffeological sense.

math.GT↗