Noncontractible periodic orbits, Gromov invariants, and Floer-theoretic torsions -- Yi-Jen Lee, November 15, 2002

The existence of periodic orbits is an important problem in dynamical systems, and in symplectic topology such existence results are typically a manifestation of the `rigidity' phenomenon. However, to date most such results are restricted to CONTRACTIBLE periodic orbits. We shall explain how variants of the Floer-theoretic torsions we have defined previously may be used to obtain some existence results for NONcontractible period orbits (of symplectic vector fields), via their relation with certain Gromov-type invariants.