Hamiltonian group action 2026-10-05
A Hamiltonian group action is a Lie group action on a symplectic manifold with an equivariant moment map . In the sign convention , each component satisfies , where is the fundamental vector field. The opposite Hamiltonian vector field convention reverses the sign.
For , the fundamental vector field of the restricted Lie group action is . If is the original moment map, then
This is the defining Hamiltonian action identity, in the convention .
If equivariance is included in the definition of a moment map, it is also preserved: the dual map intertwines the coadjoint actions of , since . Thus
is a moment map for the restricted Hamiltonian action of the Lie subgroup .
Use the paper's Fubini-Study form normalization , the Hamiltonian vector field convention , and the Lie algebra generator whose circle action is . Write . The normalized moment map for the torus action is
The moment map image is the filled triangle
Indeed, the three quantities are nonnegative and add to one, and any such triple is realized by choosing their square roots as homogeneous coordinates.
For the diagonal circle action, a point in the fixed-point set satisfies for every . If , the projective scaling must be one, forcing . If , all coordinates are scaled together. Therefore
By part (b), the diagonal moment map is
The factor follows from the specified Fubini-Study form, not the integral normalization in the linked general article. For example, in one affine complex coordinate the symplectic form is , whose interior product of a differential form with is . Choosing the generator rescales all moment maps by ; reversing the defining sign reverses their signs. The negative level in parts (d) and (e) uses the convention displayed here.
On , the diagonal fundamental vector field is nonzero, since the fixed-point set lies at moment map values and . The nondegenerate bilinear form and imply , so is a regular value. By the regular level set theorem, is a three-dimensional embedded submanifold of the four-dimensional Complex projective plane.
At , set . Then for every , so , the symplectic orthogonal complement. This complement is one-dimensional and , giving
Thus the level set is a coisotropic submanifold, neither an isotropic submanifold nor a Lagrangian submanifold. Indeed an isotropic subspace of a symplectic vector space in dimension four has dimension at most two, whereas . Its characteristic line field is generated by the diagonal circle action.
Restriction to a Lie subgroup with Lie algebra inclusion has moment map . The dual map composes with the original moment map.