Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 16 2 e Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The Hamiltonian flow of solvesCompactness 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 giveTherefore the pullback of a differential form differentiation rule yieldsso . Pullback commutes with the wedge product of differential forms, and consequentlyThus the flow preserves the symplectic volume, in fact the entire symplectic form.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 140 3 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Take the usual convention that the smooth isotopy starts at . The exterior derivative commutes with a pullback of a differential form, soConsequentlyThe 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.