According to the rules? No, you cannot. It's simply not stated anywhere that you can.
Doing non-lethal would be the closest option, or grabbing a masterwork sword instead of an enchanted one for trash fights, and hope they miss the swap
You could choose to do non-lethal damage. That's not quite the same thing, but if you're swinging your longsword and it's not even cutting them, just bruising them up slightly, you'd look like a real wiener. It's in the combat section of the core rule book.
If a non-lethal attack does too much damage, you could always try punching the guy with the hand holding the weapon. The resulting damage would be that of a nonlethal unarmed strike, which in most cases would be considerably less than that of the weapon you are wielding. Your DM may call for a Bluff check to keep others from noticing what you are doing.
I agree with Weables that nothing says you can (although I would personally find it perfectly reasonable)
You can of course find other ways to reduce your damage. If you choose to fight with two-weapons, your off hand attack would only be at +2 damage, so swinging with a gauntlet or something as your primary and a sword as your secondary would be less damage, but without the feats that might be too crippling since your to hit penalties would be huge.
Using a broken sword would reduce your hit and damage by 2 each. How easily it would be for someone to tell that you were using a broken weapon would probably be a gm call. Alchemical silver gives a -1 to damage, but I expect it would fairly obvious.
Reducing your strength would also work. Poison or spells that apply ability damage (and of course having a way to restore the damage for the fights that matter) would let you tune your strength to how fearsome you wanted to appear. This could be an expensive option though.
Reducing your strength via poison might be the way to go, since you did mention a "No Magic" arena -- so I am assuming that such effects as a Ray of Enfeeblement cast on you by a friendly spellcaster before you enter the arena are negated. If not, that might be the best way to go -- you are weaker in the fight where you don't need your full strength, but you can time things so that the spell wears off before the main bout.
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Depending on how tough the "trash" actually is, you might try to fake being a Two-Weapon Fighting Build. Put your longsword in your off-hand and something you aren't proficient with (a sai, for example) in your main hand. If you don't actually have the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, you're looking at
Main Hand: -10 for 1d4+5 damage
Off-Hand: -10 for 1d8+2 damage
Everyone will think you are terrible. When you actually meet another contestant, drop the sai and two-hand the longsword for 1d8+7 damage with no penalty.
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Are there any rules for handedness?
"I'm not left handed either!"
There are no rules on 'handedness'. Left or right, it's the hand you choose to be your main that turn that is your main hand.
And that only if you're Two-Weapon Fighting. If you're merely fighting with two weapons (i.e., using your normal number of attacks based on your BAB), all are considered to be "main hand" attacks.
It is much more difficult to fight holding back your true strength then to go all out. So this is adequately modeled with the non-lethal damage mechanic, which imposes an attack penalty.
You could also simply elect to use a weapon that does less damage on the die, and switch to a better weapon later.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
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Fight defensively, don't use Power Attack, use a shield, and use the weapon 1 handed. This will reduce your chance to hit and reduce your damage plus make you less likely to hit.
When you switch to attack mode, drop your shield, change your grip to 2 handed, and use Power Attack. That would more than double your damage bonus.
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Perhaps, pick up this feat:
When you’re dealing with large and secretive organizations, a dead enemy is just a corpse, but a captured enemy can be a tool.
Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +3.
Benefit: If you deal an amount of damage to a creature that would slay it outright, you can pull that attack, instead dealing only enough damage to reduce its hit points to –1, and leave it stable.
Could you use bluff or perform checks to disguise your attack and defence as being clumsy and weak without actually losing too much power?