Periodic orbits and Birkhoff sections of stable Hamiltonian structures

Abstract

Stable Hamiltonian structures generalize contact forms and define a volume-preserving vector field known as the Reeb vector field. We study two aspects of Reeb vector fields defined by stable Hamiltonian structures on 3-manifolds: on one hand, we classify all the examples with finitely many periodic orbits under a non-degeneracy condition; on the other, we give sufficient conditions for the existence of a supporting broken book decomposition and for the existence of a Birkhoff section.

53 pages, 4 figures. Overall improvement of the exposition and minor corrections