By a special symplectic connection we mean a torsion free connection which is either the Levi-Civita connection of a Bochner-Kähler metric of arbitrary signature, a Bochner-bi-Lagrangian connection, a connection of Ricci type or a connection with special symplectic holonomy. A manifold or orbifold with such a connection is called special symplectic.

We show that the symplectic reduction of (an open cell of) a parabolic contact manifold by a symmetry vector field is special symplectic in a canonical way. Moreover, we show that any special symplectic manifold or orbifold is locally equivalent to one of these symplectic reductions.

As a consequence, we are able to prove a number of global properties, including a classification in the compact simply connected case.

We prove that a compact Riemannian 3-symmetric space is globally symmetric if every Jacobi field along a geodesic vanishing at two points is the restriction to that geodesic of a Killing field induced by the isotropy action or, in particular, if the isotropy action is variationally complete.

We prove the famous Faber intersection number conjecture and other more general results by using a recursion formula of n-point functions for intersection numbers on moduli spaces of curves. We also present some vanishing properties of Gromov-Witten invariants.

We prove that the algebraicmultiplicity of a holomorphic vector field at an isolated singularity is invariant by topological equivalences which are differentiable at the singular point.