Arnold Conjecture and Morava K-theory

Abstract

We prove that the rank of the cohomology of a closed symplectic manifold with coefficients in a field of characteristic $p$ is smaller than the number of periodic orbits of any non-degenerate Hamiltonian flow. Following Floer, the proof relies on constructing a homology group associated to each such flow, and comparing it with the homology of the ambient symplectic manifold. The proof does not proceed by constructing a version of Floer's complex with characteristic $p$ coefficients, but uses instead the canonical (stable) complex orientations of moduli spaces of Floer trajectories to construct a version of Floer homology with coefficients in Morava's $K$-theories, and can thus be seen as an implementation of Cohen, Jones, and Segal's vision for a Floer homotopy theory. The key feature of Morava K-theory that allows the construction to be carried out is the fact that the corresponding homology and cohomology groups of classifying spaces of finite groups satisfy Poincaré duality.