The periodic Floer homology of a Dehn twist

Abstract

The periodic Floer homology of a surface symplectomorphism, defined by the first author and M. Thaddeus, is the homology of a chain complex which is generated by certain unions of periodic orbits, and whose differential counts certain embedded pseudoholomorphic curves in R cross the mapping torus. It is conjectured to recover the Seiberg-Witten Floer homology of the mapping torus for most spin-c structures, and is related to a variant of contact homology. In this paper we compute the periodic Floer homology of some Dehn twists.