On the spectral capacity of submanifolds

Abstract

The infimum of the spectral capacities of neighbourhoods of a nowhere coisotropic submanifold is shown to be zero. In contrast, neighbourhoods of a closed Lagrangian submanifold, and of certain contact-type hypersurfaces, are shown to have uniformly positive spectral capacity. Along the way we prove a quantitative Lagrangian control estimate relating spectral invariants, boundary depth, and the minimal area of holomorphic disks. The Lagrangian control also provides novel obstructions to certain Lagrangian embeddings into a symplectic ball.