Infinite ECH Capacities and Anosov Flows

Abstract

This article relates the theory of embedded contact homology (ECH) with the dynamics of Anosov flows. We show that in many cases the ECH capacities of a symplectic 4-manifold are infinite, including cotangent disk bundles over closed oriented surfaces of genus at least two. We prove that ECH obstructs Reeb Anosov and Hamiltonian Anosov flows, addressing the four-dimensional case of a question posed by Herman in 1998. Further, we obtain Floer-theoretic obstructions to a 3-manifold admitting any Anosov flow. As an application, we give new constraints on the existence of embedded Lagrangians of genus at least two in symplectic 4-manifolds. In an appendix, some related results in all dimensions are proved for capacities constructed from rational symplectic field theory.