# References

On existence of nonformal simply connected symplectic manifolds <sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1This work is supported by RFBR, grants 96-01-00182a and 98-01-00749).

Ivan K. Babenko and Iskander A. Taimanov

A smooth manifold is called symplectic if there is a nondegenerate closed 2-form $`\omega `$ on it. By the Darboux theorem near every point this form is reduced to the form $`\omega =_{j=1}^ndx^jdx^{j+n}`$ with $`\{x^j\}`$ local coordinates on the manifold. This implies that the dimension of a symplectic manifold $`M`$ is even and there is an almost complex structure on it: take a Riemannian metric $`(,)`$ on $`M`$ and define by $`\omega (u,Jv)=(u,v)`$ an automorphism $`J:TMTM`$ defining an almost complex structure. In late 60s Gromov showed that if the cohomology class of $`\omega `$ on a compact symplectic manifold $`(M,\omega )`$ is integer, $`[\omega ]H^2(M;𝐙)`$, then for sufficiently large $`N`$ there exists an embedding $`f:M𝐂P^N`$ such that $`f^{}(\omega _0)=\omega `$ with $`\omega _0`$ the Hodge form on $`𝐂P^N`$ (). As it was shown by Tischler such embedding already exists for $`N=2n+1`$ with $`dimM=2n`$ ().

Since Kähler manifolds are symplectic (take for $`\omega `$ the Kähler form), a conjecture that all compact symplectic manifolds are exhausted by Kähler manifolds up to diffeomorphisms appears.

For non-simply-connected manifolds this had been disproved by Thurston who had proposed for a simplest example $`\stackrel{~}{N}=𝐑^3/\mathrm{\Gamma }\times S^1`$ with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ a uniform lattice of uppertriangular integer $`3\times 3`$-matrices in the Heisenberg group (). It appeared that before this example had been found by Kodaira. Notice that the symplectic form on $`\stackrel{~}{N}`$ is integer.

An example of simply connected symplectic manifold nonhomeomorphic to a Kähler manifold was constructed by McDuff who had embedded the Kodaira–Thurston manifold $`\stackrel{~}{N}`$ into $`𝐂P^5`$ and had constructed a manifold $`X`$ as a symplectic blowing up of $`𝐂P^5`$ at $`\stackrel{~}{N}`$ (). The latter procedure consists in fiberwise blowing up of the normal bundle to $`\stackrel{~}{N}`$ in $`𝐂P^5`$ (since $`\stackrel{~}{N}`$ is a symplectic submanifold, fibers of the normal bundle are endowed with the canonical almost complex structure).

Later Gompf had even constructed four-dimensional simply connected symplectic manifolds which are not homeomorphic to Kähler manifolds ().

An important property of Kähler manifolds established in  is their formality. A polyhedron $`M`$ is called formal if there exists a homomorphism of skew-commutative graded differential algebras $`((M),d)(H^{}(M;𝐐),d)`$ such that it induces an isomorphism of cohomologies. Here $`(H^{}(M),d)`$ is a ring of rational cohomologies endowed with a zero differential $`d0`$ and $`((M),d)`$ is the minimal model of $`M`$ (for the definition of minimal models of simply connected and nilpotent spaces see, for instance, ).

Being poor with in methods of constructing a collection of examples of symplectic manifolds generates many papers on finding symplectic non-Kähler non-simply-connected manifolds (see, for instance, ) and therewith the formality criterion was used in . A problem on existence of nonformal simply connected symplectic manifolds remained open. The most complete collection of results on formality of symplectic manifolds is given in .

In general, as we show, a simply connected symplectic manifold is nonformal. Therefore despite a strong differential-geometric structure which is a symplectic form the topology of a simply connected symplectic manifold can be substantially more complicated than topology of Kähler manifolds.

We define $`X_k`$ as a symplectic blowing up of $`𝐂P^k`$ at embedded the Kodaira–Thurston manifold $`\stackrel{~}{N}`$. In these notations the McDuff example is $`X_5`$. All manifolds $`X_k`$ are simply connected for $`k5`$.

The following theorem holds.

Theorem. For $`k6`$ the manifold $`X_k`$ is nonformal.

The proof is as follows.

Let $`\pi :X_k𝐂P^k`$ be the projection whose restriction onto the complement to the preimage of $`\stackrel{~}{N}`$ is a diffeomorphism onto the image and let $`\stackrel{~}{V}`$ be a tubular neighborhood of $`\pi ^1(\stackrel{~}{N})`$. The exact cohomology sequence of the pair $`(X_k,\stackrel{~}{V})`$ contains the following fragment

$$0H^4(X_k,\stackrel{~}{V})\stackrel{}{}H^3(\stackrel{~}{V})H^3(\stackrel{~}{N})\text{Ker}H^3(X_k)0.$$
(1)   
A space $`\stackrel{~}{V}`$ is diffeomorphic to a $`𝐂P^{k3}`$-bundle over $`\stackrel{~}{N}`$ and $`H^{}(\stackrel{~}{V})`$ is isomorphic to a skewed tensor product $`H^{}(\stackrel{~}{N})\widehat{}H^{}(𝐂P^{k3})`$. Denote by $`v`$ some generator of $`H^1(\stackrel{~}{N})`$, denote by $`b`$ the generator of $`H^2(𝐂P^{k3})`$, denote by $`aH^2(X_k)`$ the cohomology class of the symplectic form, and denote by $`uH^3(X_k)`$ an element which is mapped into $`bv`$ (1). It is shown that $`ua=0`$ and, since $`u`$ and $`a`$ are spheric cycles, there exists a generator $`\widehat{z}`$, of the minimal model $`(X_k)`$ of the space $`X_k`$, such that $`d\widehat{z}=\widehat{u}\widehat{a}`$ where $`\widehat{u}`$ and $`\widehat{a}`$ are mapped into $`u`$ and $`a`$ by the Hurewicz homomorphism.

It is shown by straightforward computations that $`\widehat{z}\widehat{u}(X_k)`$ generates a nontrivial seven-dimensional cohomology cycle and therefore $`X_k`$ is nonformal. For these computations it is essentially that $`k6`$.

The detailed proof will be published elsewhere.