Proof of the Wirtinger inequality

1.1k Views Asked by At

This is an exercise from the book "Complex Geometry, An Introduction" by Huybrechts. The statement involves to prove that the restriction of the fundamental form $\omega$ of a vector space $V, I, \langle, \rangle$ (with real dimension $2n$ and an almost complex structure $I$ compatible with the inner product $\langle, \rangle$), to a sub-space $W$ of real dimension $2m$, is not greater than $m! vol$ where $vol$ is the volume form of $W$.

$$\omega^m|_W\le m!\cdot vol$$ The book has a hint: There exists an orthonomal basis $\{u_i, v_i:i=1,2,\cdots, m\}$ of $W$ such that $$\omega|_W=\sum_{i=1}^m \lambda_i u^i\wedge v^i$$ Where $u^i, v^i, i=1, 2, \cdots, m$ are the dual basis. From this one is easy to prove the conclusion.

I did find a proof without using the hint from the book "Complex Analytic Sets" by E.M. Chirka and I understood the proof well. My question is how to prove the expression in the hint.

Let $P: V\rightarrow W$ be the orthogonal projection and $J=P\circ I$ then I was led to the conclusion that the existence of the above expression depends on a fact that $J^2: W\rightarrow W$ has a real eigenvalue whose eigenspace is of dimension (at least) $2$. Then I don't know how to prove this.

Any hints are appreciated.

After reading Ted's answer I realized that $J$ is actually skew-symmetric for $\langle Jv, w\rangle=\langle Iv, w\rangle$ since $(Iv-Jv)\perp W$. Then $J$ has the desired block diagonal form.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

17
On BEST ANSWER

This is just linear algebra (and nothing to do with projection). It's really just the process for obtaining the normal form for a skew-symmetric bilinear form.

First of all, if $\omega|_W$ is degenerate, then the result is obvious, as $\omega^m|_W = 0$. So we suppose $\omega|_W$ is nondegenerate. This means that $\omega|_W$ is represented by a nonsingular skew-symmetric real $2m\times 2m$ matrix $A$ (here I'm assuming that $\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle$ is a real inner product on $V$). $\sqrt{-1}A$ is a hermitian matrix, which is unitarily diagonalizable by the Spectral Theorem, and so therefore is $A$, with pure imaginary eigenvalues. Following the usual linear algebra protocol (taking real and imaginary parts of the complex eigenvectors), we get a real normal form for $A$ with diagonal blocks of the form $\begin{bmatrix} 0 & -\lambda_j \\ \lambda_j & 0\end{bmatrix}$ with respect to an orthonormal basis. [Note that I don't need to assume nondegeneracy. Degeneracy will manifest itself by $\lambda_j=0$ for some $j$.]

That is, we end up with an orthonormal basis $\{u_1,v_1,\dots,u_m,v_m\}$ for $W$. Letting $\{u^1,v^1,\dots,u^m,v^m\}$ denote the dual basis, this means that $$\omega|_W = \sum_{j=1}^m \lambda_j u^j\wedge v^j$$ for some scalars $\lambda_j$.

Remember that $\omega(u,v) = \langle Iu,v\rangle$. Then $\omega(u_j,v_j) = \lambda_j = \langle Iu_j,v_j\rangle$. By Cauchy-Schwarz, $$|\lambda_j| = \left|\langle Iu_j,v_j\rangle\right| \le \|Iu_j\|\|v_j\| = \|u_j\|\|v_j\| = 1,$$ and you know how to finish it from here.