Counting genus-zero real curves in symplectic manifolds

Abstract

There are two types of $J$–holomorphic spheres in a symplectic manifold which are invariant under an anti-symplectic involution: those that have a fixed point locus and those that do not. The former are described by moduli spaces of $J$–holomorphic disks, which are well studied in the literature. In this paper, we first study moduli spaces describing the latter and then combine the two types of moduli spaces to get a well-defined theory of counting real curves of genus 0. We use equivariant localization to show that these invariants (unlike the disk invariants) are essentially the same for the two (standard) involutions on ${\mathbb{P}}^{4n-1}$.