Solving the cohomological equation for locally hamiltonian flows, part I -- local obstructions

Abstract

We study the cohomological equation $Xu=f$ for smooth locally Hamiltonian flows on compact surfaces. The main novelty of the proposed approach is that it is used to study the regularity of the solution $u$ when the flow has saddle loops, which has not been systematically studied before. Then we need to limit the flow to its minimum components. We show the existence and (optimal) regularity of solutions regarding the relations with the associated cohomological equations for interval exchange transformations (IETs). Our main theorems state that the regularity of solutions depends not only on the vanishing of the so-called Forni's distributions (cf.\ \cite{Fo1,Fo3}), but also on the vanishing of families of new invariant distributions (local obstructions) reflecting the behavior of $f$ around the saddles. Our main results provide some key ingredient for the complete solution to the regularity problem of solutions (in cohomological equations) for a.a.\ locally Hamiltonian flows (with or without saddle loops) to be shown in \cite{Fr-Ki3}. The main contribution of this article is to define the aforementioned new families of invariant distributions $\mathfrak{d}^k_{σ,j}$, $\mathfrak{C}^k_{σ,l}$ and analyze their effect on the regularity of $u$ and on the regularity of the associated cohomological equations for IETs. To prove this new phenomenon, we further develop local analysis of $f$ near degenerate singularities inspired by tools from \cite{Fr-Ki} and \cite{Fr-Ul2}. We develop new tools of handling functions whose higher derivatives have polynomial singularities over IETs.