arXiv research

Proves Giroux Correspondence in 3D using Heegaard splittings.

Generalizes Giroux's result to higher dimensions and applies to contact manifolds.

Classifies tight contact structures on specific Seifert fibered manifolds.

New proof of Giroux Correspondence for tight contact 3-manifolds.

These notes provide an introduction to Giroux's theory of convex surfaces in contact 3-manifolds and its simplest applications. They put a special emphasis on pictures and discussions of explicit examples. The first goal is to explain why all the information about a contact structure in a neighborhood of a generic surf…

New method distinguishes Legendrian knots using surface diagrams.

Recently, Honda, Kazez and Matic described an adapted partial open book of a compact contact 3-manifold with convex boundary by generalizing the work of Giroux in the closed case. They also implicitly established a one-to-one correspondence between isomorphism classes of partial open book decompositions modulo positive…

Extends spectral order definition to contact manifolds with convex boundary.

New examples show contact invariants can be non-zero even with half Giroux torsion.

We review Giroux's contact handles and contact handle attachments in dimension three and show that a bypass attachment consists of a pair of contact 1 and 2-handles. As an application we describe explicit contact handle decompositions of infinitely many pairwise non-isotopic overtwisted 3-spheres. We also give an alter…

Contact structures on 3-manifolds are analyzed by decomposing the manifold along convex surfaces. Background results of Giroux, Eliashberg, Colin, and Honda are discussed with an emphasis on examples. Convex decompositions are then used to give a new proof of the Gabai-Eliashberg-Thurston Theorem on the existence of un…

We classify positive tight contact structures, up to isotopy fixing the boundary, on the manifolds $N=M(D^{2}; r_1, r_2)$ with minimal convex boundary of slope $s$ and Giroux torsion 0 along $\partial N$, where $r_1,r_2\in (0,1)\cap\mathbb{Q}$, in the following cases: (1) $s\in(-\infty, 0)\cup[2, +\infty)$; (2) $s\in[0…

Study tight contact structures on specific 3-manifolds.

The study confirms the non-existence of rational homology ball symplectic fillings for certain Brieskorn spheres.

The study explores Legendrian invariants and half Giroux torsion in contact structures.

Classifies Legendrian Hopf links in lens spaces.

New examples of tight contact manifolds with algebraic torsion.

Introduces rectangular diagrams to represent surfaces in 3-sphere.

In this paper we prove a vanishing theorem for the contact Ozsvath--Szabo invariants of certain contact 3--manifolds having positive Giroux torsion. We use this result to establish similar vanishing results for contact structures with underlying 3--manifolds admitting either a torus fibration over the circle or a Seife…

In this paper we give explicit, handle-by-handle constructions of concave symplectic fillings of all closed, oriented contact 3-manifolds. These constructions combine recent results of Giroux relating contact structures and open book decompositions of 3-manifolds, earlier results of the author on attaching 4-dimensiona…

New 4D shapes can't be opened like books.

In this paper, we study compact convex Lefschetz fibrations on compact convex symplectic manifolds (i.e., Liouville domains) of dimension $2n+2$ which are introduced by Seidel and later also studied by McLean. By a result of Akbulut-Arikan, the open book on $\partial W$, which we call \emph{convex open book}, induced b…

New 5D contact manifolds found without fillings or torsion.

Study on transverse knots and their neighborhoods, proving unique standard neighborhoods and destabilization results.

We prove that the Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariant of a closed contact 3-manifold with positive Giroux torsion vanishes.

Contact round surgery proves existence of contact structures on 3-manifolds.

The study shows examples of contact 3-manifold binding sums that fail to preserve certain properties.

Two special moves relate any two open book decompositions of a 3-manifold.

We prove relative versions of the symplectic capping theorem and sufficiency of Giroux's criterion for Stein fillability and use these to study the 4-genus of knots.

We explain the effect of applying a full Lutz twist along a pre-Lagrangian torus in a contact 3-manifold, on the contact invariant in Heegaard Floer homology with twisted coefficients.

Quantum invariants for fibered links determined by genus and Hopf invariant.

Computes homotopy types of embedding spaces in tight contact 3-manifolds.

The study connects periodic surface homeomorphisms to contact structures using rational open books.

The paper introduces foliated open books for contact 3-manifolds with boundary foliations.

Let M be a closed oriented 3-manifold such that S^1 x M admits a symplectic structure w. The goal of this paper is to show that M is a fiber bundle over S^1. The basic idea is to use the obvious S^1-action on S^1 x M by rotating the first factor, and one of the key steps is to show that the S^1-action on S^1 x M is act…

According to Giroux, contact manifolds can be described as open books whose pages are Stein manifolds. For 5-dimensional contact manifolds the pages are Stein surfaces, which permit a description via Kirby diagrams. We introduce handle moves on such diagrams that do not change the corresponding contact manifold. As an …

We use contact fiber sums of open book decompositions to define an infinite hierarchy of filling obstructions for contact 3-manifolds, called planar k-torsion for nonnegative integers k, all of which cause the contact invariant in Embedded Contact Homology to vanish. Planar 0-torsion is equivalent to overtwistedness, w…

Using deformations of foliations to contact structures as well as rigidity properties of Anosov foliations we provide infinite families of examples which show that the space of taut foliations in a given homotopy class of plane fields is in general not path connected. Similar methods also show that the space of represe…

Giroux has described a correspondence between open book decompositions on a 3--manifold and contact structures. In this paper we use Heegaard Floer homology to give restrictions on contact structures which correspond to open book decompositions with planar pages, generalizing a recent result of Etnyre.

We show that if (B,π) is an open book decomposition of a contact 3-manifold (Y,ξ), then the complement of the binding B has no Giroux torsion. We also prove the sutured Heegaard-Floer c-bar invariant of the binding of an open book is non-zero.

Proves equivalence of contact invariants in two Floer homology theories.

The aim of this paper is to give an alternative proof of a theorem about the existence of contact structures on five-manifolds due to Geiges. This theorem asserts that simply-connected five-manifolds admit a contact structure in every homotopy class of almost contact structures. Our proof uses the open book constructio…

Common positive stabilisation found for isotopic contact structures.

These are lecture notes from the Clay Mathematics Institute summer school ``Floer Homology, Gauge Theory, and Low Dimensional Topology'' Alfred Renyi Institute; www.claymath.org/programs/summer_school/2004/. The main goal of these notes is to sketch a proof of Giroux correspondence between open book decompositions of t…

Study how convex structures on surfaces change.

This is a survey on contact open books and contact Dehn surgery. The relation between these two concepts is discussed, and various applications are sketched, e.g. the monodromy of Stein fillable contact 3-manifolds, the Giroux-Goodman proof of Harer's conjecture on fibred links, construction of symplectic caps to filli…

Given a contact structure on a closed, oriented three-manifold $Y$, we describe an invariant which takes values in the three-manifold's Floer homology $\HFa$. This invariant vanishes for overtwisted contact structures and is non-zero for Stein fillable ones. The construction uses of Giroux's interpretation of contact s…

The paper studies how convex surfaces shrink under mean curvature flow with a free boundary.