Local rigidity, contact homeomorphisms, and conformal factors

Abstract

We show that if the image of a Legendrian submanifold under a contact homeomorphism (i.e. a homeomorphism that is a $C^0$-limit of contactomorphisms) is smooth then it is Legendrian, assuming only positive local lower bounds on the conformal factors of the approximating contactomorphisms. More generally the analogous result holds for coisotropic submanifolds in the sense of arXiv:1306.6367. This is a contact version of the Humili\`ere-Leclercq-Seyfaddini coisotropic rigidity theorem in $C^0$ symplectic geometry, and the proof adapts the author's recent re-proof of that result in arXiv:1912.13043 based on a notion of local rigidity of points on locally closed subsets. We also provide two different flavors of examples showing that a contact homeomorphism can map a submanifold that is transverse to the contact structure to one that is smooth and tangent to the contact structure at a point.