The Hamiltonian flow of solves
Compactness and the absence of a boundary make this smooth vector field complete, so the flow exists for all real . The defining equation and Cartan's magic formula give
Therefore the pullback of a differential form differentiation rule yields
so . Pullback commutes with the wedge product of differential forms, and consequently
Thus the flow preserves the symplectic volume, in fact the entire symplectic form.
Take the usual convention that the smooth isotopy starts at . The exterior derivative commutes with a pullback of a differential form, so
Consequently
The right-hand condition says precisely that is a symplectic isotopy.
Here an exact symplectic manifold is necessarily noncompact in positive dimension: if and , then , contradicting the positive symplectic volume and the Generalized Stokes theorem on a compact smooth manifold without boundary. Thus the paper's introductory word “closed” must here be read as “without boundary”, as its parenthesis suggests, rather than as including compactness.