• Journal of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.795-834
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• 2016

The main purpose of this paper is to propose a scheme of a proof of the nonsimpleness of the group $Homeo^{\Omega}$ ($D^2$, ${\partial}D^2$) of area preserving homeomorphisms of the 2-disc $D^2$. We first establish the existence of Alexander isotopy in the category of Hamiltonian homeomorphisms. This reduces the question of extendability of the well-known Calabi homomorphism Cal : $Diff^{\Omega}$ ($D^1$, ${\partial}D^2$)${\rightarrow}{\mathbb{R}}$ to a homomorphism ${\bar{Cal}}$ : Hameo($D^2$, ${\partial}D^2$)${\rightarrow}{\mathbb{R}}$ to that of the vanishing of the basic phase function $f_{\underline{F}}$, a Floer theoretic graph selector constructed in [9], that is associated to the graph of the topological Hamiltonian loop and its normalized Hamiltonian ${\underline{F}}$ on $S^2$ that is obtained via the natural embedding $D^2{\hookrightarrow}S^2$. Here Hameo($D^2$, ${\partial}D^2$) is the group of Hamiltonian homeomorphisms introduced by $M{\ddot{u}}ller$ and the author [18]. We then provide an evidence of this vanishing conjecture by proving the conjecture for the special class of weakly graphical topological Hamiltonian loops on $D^2$ via a study of the associated Hamiton-Jacobi equation.