The restricted planar three-body problem has a rich history, yet many unanswered questions still remain. In the present paper we prove the existence of a global surface of section near the smaller body in a new range of energies and mass ratios for which the Hill's region still has three connected components. The approach relies on recent global methods in symplectic geometry and contrasts sharply with the perturbative methods used until now.

Here we prove that for each Hamiltonian function H ∈ C ∞ (R 4 , R) defined on the standard symplectic (R 4 , ω 0 ), for which M := H −1 (0) is a nonempty compact regular energy level, the Hamiltonian flow on M is not minimal. That is, we prove there exists a closed invariant subset of the Hamiltonian flow in M that is neither ∅ nor all of M . This answers the four dimensional case of a twenty year old question of Michel Herman, part of which can be regarded as a special case of the Gottschalk Conjecture.Our principal technique is the introduction and development of a new class of pseudoholomorphic curve in the "symplectization" R × M of framed Hamiltonian manifolds (M, λ, ω). We call these feral curves because they are allowed to have infinite (so-called) Hofer energy, and hence may limit to invariant sets more general than the finite union of periodic orbits. Standard pseudoholomorphic curve analysis is inapplicable without energy bounds, and thus much of this manuscript is devoted to establishing properties of feral curves, such as area and curvature estimates, energy thresholds, compactness, asymptotic properties, etc.

We determine the Conley-Zehnder indices of all periodic orbits of the rotating Kepler problem for energies below the critical Jacobi energy. Consequently, we show the universal cover of the bounded component of the regularized energy hypersurface is dynamically convex. Moreover, in the universal cover there is always precisely one periodic orbit with Conley-Zehnder index 3, namely the lift of the doubly covered retrograde circular orbit.

We prove a version of Gromov's compactness theorem for pseudoholomorphic curves which holds locally in the target symplectic manifold. This result applies to sequences of curves with an unbounded number of free boundary components, and in families of degenerating target manifolds which have unbounded geometry (eg no uniform energy threshold). Core elements of the proof regard curves as submanifolds (rather than maps) and then adapt methods from the theory of minimal surfaces. 32Q65; 53D99

Polyfold theory was developed by Hofer-Wysocki-Zehnder by finding commonalities in the analytic framework for a variety of geometric elliptic PDEs, in particular moduli spaces of pseudoholomorphic curves. It aims to systematically address the common difficulties of "compactification" and "transversality" with a new notion of smoothness on Banach spaces, new local models for differential geometry, and a nonlinear Fredholm theory in the new context. We shine meta-mathematical light on the bigger picture and core ideas of this theory. In addition, we compiled and condensed the core definitions and theorems of polyfold theory into a streamlined exposition, and outline their application at the example of Morse theory.