An elementary alternative to PFH spectral invariants

Inspired by Hutchings’ elementary alternative to ECH capacities, we introduce an elementary alternative to spectral invariants defined via periodic Floer homology (PFH). We use these spectral invariants to provide more elementary proofs of a number of results which have recently been obtained using PFH spectral invariants. Among these results are quantitative closing lemmas for area-preserving surface diffeomorphisms and the simplicity conjecture.