Orderability and the Weinstein Conjecture

Joint work with Peter Albers and Urs Fuchs. In 2000 Eliashberg-Polterovich introduced the natural notion of orderability of contact manifolds; that is, the (non)existence of positive loops of contactomorphisms. I will explain how one can study orderability questions using the machinery of Rabinowitz Floer homology. We establish a link between orderable and hypertight contact manifolds, and show that the Weinstein Conjecture holds (i.e. there exists a closed Reeb orbit) whenever there exists a positive (not necessarily contractible) loop of contactomorphisms.