arXiv research

Study tight contact structures on specific 3-manifolds.

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

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

Classifies Legendrian Hopf links in lens spaces.

We construct examples in any odd dimension of contact manifolds with finite and non-zero algebraic torsion (in the sense of Latschev-Wendl), which are therefore tight and do not admit strong symplectic fillings. We prove that Giroux torsion implies algebraic $1$-torsion in any odd dimension, which proves a conjecture b…

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…

Classifies tight contact structures on specific Seifert fibered manifolds.

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

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…

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

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.

We extend the Heegaard Floer homological definition of spectral order for closed contact 3-manifolds due to Kutluhan, Matić, Van Horn-Morris, and Wand to contact 3-manifolds with convex boundary. We show that the order of a codimension zero contact submanifold bounds the order of the ambient manifold from above. As the…

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

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.

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…

We generalize the familiar notions of overtwistedness and Giroux torsion in 3-dimensional contact manifolds, defining an infinite hierarchy of local filling obstructions called planar torsion, whose integer-valued order $k \ge 0$ can be interpreted as measuring a gradation in "degrees of tightness" of contact manifolds…

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

We extract a nonnegative integer-valued invariant, which we call the "order of algebraic torsion", from the Symplectic Field Theory of a closed contact manifold, and show that its finiteness gives obstructions to the existence of symplectic fillings and exact symplectic cobordisms. A contact manifold has algebraic tors…

Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariants are a powerful way to prove tightness of contact structures but they are known to vanish in the presence of Giroux torsion. In this paper we construct, on infinitely many manifolds, infinitely many isotopy classes of universally tight torsion free contact structures whose Ozsvath-Szabo …

We use the theory of sutured TQFT to classify contact elements in the sutured Floer homology, with $\Z$ coefficients, of certain sutured manifolds of the form $(Σ\times S^1, F \times S^1)$ where $Σ$ is an annulus or punctured torus. Using this classification, we give a new proof that the contact invariant in sutured Fl…

Suppose that L is a null--homologous Legendrian knot in a contact 3--manifold. We determine the connection between the sutured invariant of the complement of L and the Legendrian invariant defined by Lisca, Ozsvath, Stipsicz and Szabo. In particular, we derive a vanishing theorem for the Legendrian invariant in the pre…

We construct infinitely many non-diffeomorphic examples of $5$-dimensional contact manifolds which are tight, admit no strong fillings, and do not have Giroux torsion. We obtain obstruction results for symplectic cobordisms, for which we give a proof not relying on the polyfold abstract perturbation scheme for SFT. The…

Proves Giroux Correspondence in 3D using Heegaard splittings.

Contact round surgery of contact 3-manifolds is introduced in this paper. By using this method, an alternative proof of the existence of a contact structure on any closed orientable 3-manifold is given. It is also proved that any contact structure on any closed orientable 3-manifold is constructed from the standard con…

Consider a transverse knot which is the binding of an open book for the ambient contact manifold. In this paper, we show that the transverse invariants defined by Lisca, Ozsvath, Stipsicz, and Szabo (LOSS) are nonvanishing for such transverse knots. This is true regardless of whether or not the ambient contact structur…

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…

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

We construct four-dimensional symplectic cobordisms between contact three-manifolds generalizing an example of Eliashberg. One key feature is that any handlebody decomposition of one of these cobordisms must involve three-handles. The other key feature is that these cobordisms contain chains of symplectically embedded …

For contact manifolds in dimension three, the notions of weak and strong symplectic fillability and tightness are all known to be inequivalent. We extend these facts to higher dimensions: in particular, we define a natural generalization of weak fillings and prove that it is indeed weaker (at least in dimension five),w…

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

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…

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.

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…

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…

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.

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…

We prove that a nicely fibered link (by which we mean the binding of an open book) in a tight contact manifold $(M,ξ)$ with zero Giroux torsion has a transverse representative realizing the Bennequin bound if and only if the contact structure it supports (since it is also the binding of an open book) is $ξ.$ This gives…

We generalize a result of Giroux which says that a closed surface in a contact $3$-manifold with Morse-Smale characteristic foliation is convex. Specifically, we show that the result holds in contact manifolds of arbitrary dimension. As an application, we show that a particular closed hypersurface introduced by A. Mori…

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…

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…

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…

We examine open books with powers of fibered Dehn twists as monodromy. The resulting contact manifolds can be thought of as Boothby-Wang orbibundles over symplectic orbifolds. Using the mean Euler characteristic of equivariant symplectic homology we can distinguish these contact manifolds and hence show that some fiber…

The algorithm given by Akbulut-Ozbagci constructs an explicit open book decomposition on a contact three-manifold described by a contact surgery on a link in the three-sphere. In this article, we will improve this algorithm by using Giroux's contact cell decomposition process. Our algorithm is more economical on choosi…

This article sketches various ideas in contact geometry that have become useful in low-dimensional topology. Specifically we (1) outline the proof of Eliashberg and Thurston's results concerning perturbations of foliatoins into contact structures, (2) discuss Eliashberg and Weinstein's symplectic handle attachments, an…

We provide a complete set of two moves that suffice to relate any two open book decompositions of a given 3-manifold. One of the moves is the usual plumbing with a positive or negative Hopf band, while the other one is a special local version of Harer's twisting, which is presented in two different (but stably equivale…

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…