Constraints on symplectic quasi-states

Abstract

We prove that given a closed connected symplectic manifold equipped with a Borel probability measure, an arbitrarily large portion of the measure can be covered by a symplectically embedded polydisk, generalizing a result of Schlenk. We apply this to constraints on symplectic quasi-states. Quasi-states are a certain class of not necessarily linear functionals on the algebra of continuous functions of a compact space. When the space is a symplectic manifold, a more restrictive subclass of symplectic quasi-states was introduced by Entov--Polterovich. We use our embedding result to prove that a certain `soft' construction of quasi-states, which is due to Aarnes, cannot yield nonlinear symplectic quasi-states in dimension at least four.