Math symbols in .pdf bookmarks tab not displaying correctly

Question

I am using the commands

\usepackage{hyperref}

\hypersetup{pdftex,colorlinks=true,allcolors=black}

\usepackage{hypcap}

to create clickable links in the index and references, and also to create an index in the bookmarks tab in .pdf readers.

It works as intended except for the fact that math symbols don't display right, they show something close to the tex code. Is there any way to fix this?

This what happens:

Red arrows should be $\sigma(E,E^*)$ and $W^{1,p}_0(\Omega)$. You get the point.

Answer 1

Not any character is possible in a PDF bookmark -- Unicode is supported but this requires a different setup of the content of bookmarks. This can be achieved with \texorpdfstring{TeX content}{pdf content}

\documentclass{article}


\usepackage{textgreek}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\hypersetup{pdftex,unicode,colorlinks=true,allcolors=black}

\usepackage{hypcap}


\begin{document}
\section{Foo \texorpdfstring{$\sigma(E,E^*)$}{\textsigma(E,E\textsuperscript{*})}}
\end{document}