Two closed orbits for non-degenerate Reeb flows

Abstract

AbstractWe prove that every non-degenerate Reeb flow on a closed contact manifold M admitting a strong symplectic filling W with vanishing first Chern class carries at least two geometrically distinct closed orbits provided that the positive equivariant symplectic homology of W satisfies a mild condition. Under further assumptions, we establish the existence of two geometrically distinct closed orbits on any contact finite quotient of M. Several examples of such contact manifolds are provided, like displaceable ones, unit cosphere bundles, prequantisation circle bundles, Brieskorn spheres and toric contact manifolds. We also show that this condition on the equivariant symplectic homology is preserved by boundary connected sums of Liouville domains. As a byproduct of one of our applications, we prove a sort of Lusternik–Fet theorem for Reeb flows on the unit cosphere bundle of not rationally aspherical manifolds satisfying suitable additional assumptions.