An obstruction to conservation of volume in contact dynamics

Abstract

A theorem of Moser guarantees that every diffeomorphism of a closed manifold can be isotoped to a volume preserving one. We show that this statement cannot be extended into contact category: some connected components of contactomorphism groups of certain contact manifolds contain no volume-preserving diffeomorphisms. This phenomenon can be considered from different viewpoints: geometric (isometric action of the contact mapping class group on the moduli space of contact forms), topological (action in symplectic homology) and dynamical (diffusion). We define a numerical invariant - a kind of contact Lyapunov exponent - which leads to a quantitive version of the abovementioned result.