arXiv research

We give a bordism-theoretic characterisation of those closed almost contact (2q+1)-manifolds (with q > 2) which admit a Stein fillable contact structure. Our method is to apply Eliashberg's h-principle for Stein manifolds in the setting of Kreck's modified surgery. As an application, we show that any simply connected a…

We use the Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariant to produce examples of strongly symplectically fillable contact 3-manifolds which are not Stein fillable.

Study shows patterns in Stein fillability of trefoil surgeries.

We continue our study of contact structures on manifolds of dimension at least five using complex surgery theory. We show that in each dimension 2q+1 > 3 there are 'maximal' almost contact manifolds to which there is a Stein cobordism from any other (2q+1)-dimensional contact manifold. We show that the product M x S^2 …

Stein fillability of circle bundles over symplectic manifolds is restricted.

Study embeds ruled surfaces into symplectic manifolds, finds Stein fillability results.

In this paper, we study strong symplectic fillability and Stein fillability of some tight contact structures on negative parabolic and negative hyperbolic torus bundles over the circle. For the universally tight contact structure with twisting $π$ in $S^1$-direction on a negative parabolic torus bundle, we completely d…

New open books defy positive factorisation in genus one.

New open books solve a long-standing surface mapping class group question.

The paper explores nonexistence and existence of symplectic and Stein fillable contact structures on 3-manifolds.

It is known by A. Loi and R. Piergallini that a closed, oriented, smooth 3-manifold is Stein fillable if and only if it has a positive open book decomposition. In the present paper we will show that for every link L in a Stein fillable 3-manifold there exists an additional knot L' to L such that the union of the links …

We use contact handle decompositions and a stabilization process to compute the cylindrical contact homology of a subcritical Stein-fillable contact manifold with vanishing first Chern class, and show that it is completely determined by the homology of a subcritical Stein-filling of the contact manifold.

We make some elementary observations concerning subcritically Stein fillable contact structures on 5-manifolds. Specifically, we determine the diffeomorphism type of such contact manifolds in the case the fundamental group is finite cyclic, and we show that on the 5-sphere the standard contact structure is the unique s…

For any integer $n\geq 2$, we construct an infinite family of Stein fillable contact $(4n-1)$-manifolds each of which admits infinitely many pairwise homotopy inequivalent Stein fillings.

We give examples of contact structures which admit exact symplectic fillings, but no Stein fillings, answering a question of Ghiggini.

Classifies tight contact structures on surgeries of the Whitehead link.

We define an invariant of contact structures in dimension three from Heegaard Floer homology. This invariant takes values in the set $\mathbb{Z}_{\geq0}\cup\{\infty\}$. It is zero for overtwisted contact structures, $\infty$ for Stein fillable contact structures, non-decreasing under Legendrian surgery, and computable …

We characterize the closed, oriented, Seifert fibered 3-manifolds which are oriented boundaries of Stein manifolds. We also show that for this class of 3-manifolds the existence of Stein fillings is equivalent to the existence of symplectic fillings.

In this article, using combinatorial techniques of mapping class groups, we show that a Stein fillable integral homology $3$-sphere supported by an open book decomposition with page a $4$-holed sphere admits a unique Stein filling up to diffeomorphism. Furthermore, according to a property of deforming symplectic fillin…

We construct, somewhat non-standard, Legendrian surgery diagrams for some Stein fillable contact structures on some plumbing trees of circle bundles over spheres. We then show how to put such a surgery diagram on the pages of an open book for $S^3,$ with relatively low genus. Thus we produce open books with low genus p…

We construct a family of Stein fillable contact homology 3-spheres such that each contact structure of the family is supported by an open book with planar page, and a Stein filling of the contact manifold is of Mazur type.

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

A two-dimensional open book (S,h) determines a closed, oriented three-manifold Y(S,h) and a contact structure C(S,h) on Y(S,h). The contact structure C(S,h) is Stein fillable if h is positive, i.e. h can be written as a product of right-handed Dehn twists. Work of Wendl implies that when S has genus zero the converse s…

There is an intrinsic notion of what it means for a contact manifold to be the smooth boundary of a Stein manifold. The same concept has another more extrinsic formulation, which is often used as a convenient working hypothesis. We give a simple proof that the two are equivalent. Moreover it is shown that, even though …

We prove that Stein surfaces with boundary coincide up to orientation preserving diffeomorphisms with simple branched coverings of $\B^4$ whose branch set is a positive braided surface. As a consequence, we have that a smooth oriented 3-manifold is Stein fillable iff it has a positive open-book decomposition.

On small Seifert fibered spaces $M(e_0;r_1,r_2,r_3)$ with $e_0\neq-1,-2,$ all tight contact structures are Stein fillable. This is not the case for $e_0=-1$ or $-2$. However, for negative twisting structures it is expected that they are all symplectically fillable. Here, we characterize fillable structures among zero-t…

The paper computes a tau-invariant for holomorphic curves in Stein domains and links.

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

Extending work of Chen, we prove the Weinstein conjecture in dimension three for strongly fillable contact structures with either non-vanishing first Chern class or with strong and exact filling having non-trivial canonical bundle. This implies the Weinstein conjecture for certain Stein fillable contact structures obta…

In this article, we prove a generalization of a theorem of Lisca-Matic to Stein cobordisms and develop a method for distinguishing certain Stein cobordisms using rotation numbers. Using these results along with standard techniques from convex surface theory and classifications of tight contact structures on certain 3-m…

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.

For a 4-manifold represented by a framed knot in $S^3$, it has been well known that the 4-manifold admits a Stein structure if the framing is less than the maximal Thurston-Bennequin number of the knot. In this paper, we prove either the converse of this fact is false or there exists a compact contractible oriented smo…

We provide sufficient conditions assuring that a suitably decorated 2-polyhedron can be thickened to a compact 4-dimensional Stein domain. We also study a class of flat polyhedra in 4-manifolds and find conditions assuring that they admit Stein, compact neighborhoods. We base our calculations on Turaev's shadows suitab…

Classifies contact structures on negative-definite Seifert fibred spaces.

We established existence of periodic Reeb orbits for a large class of tight contact structures on closed 3-manifolds, notably the Stein fillable structures, based on a fundamental theorem of Cliff Taubes on symplectic 4-manifolds.

As an application of the construction of open books on plumbed 3-manifolds, we construct elliptic open books on torus bundles over the circle. In certain cases these open books are compatible with Stein fillable contact structures and have minimal genus.

We describe explicit horizontal open books on some Seifert fibered 3--manifolds. We show that the contact structures compatible with these horizontal open books are Stein fillable and horizontal as well. Moreover we draw surgery diagrams for some of these contact structures.

We introduce a new generalization of Gompf nuclei and give applications. We construct infinitely many exotic smooth structures for a large class of compact 4-manifolds with boundary, regarding topological invariants. We prove that a large class of closed 3-manifolds (including disjoint unions of Stein fillable 3-manifo…

We study diffeomorphisms of compact, oriented surfaces, developing methods of distinguishing those which have positive factorizations into Dehn twists from those which satisfy the weaker condition of right veering. We use these to construct open book decompositions of Stein-fillable 3-manifolds whose monodromies have n…

Classifies negative-twisting structures on Seifert fibred spaces using Heegaard Floer homology.

In this paper we obtain the following results: (1) Any compact Stein surface with boundary embeds naturally into a symplectic Lefschetz fibration over the 2-sphere. (2) There exists a minimal elliptic fibration over the 2-disk, which is not Stein. (3) The circle bundle over a genus n>1 surface with euler number e=-1 ad…

In this note we observe that one can contact embed all contact 3-manifolds into a Stein fillable contact structure on the twisted $S^3$-bundle over $S^2$ and also into a unique overtwisted contact structure on $S^3\times S^2$. These results are proven using "spun embeddings" and Lefschetz fibrations.

We define the reduced Khovanov homology of an open book (S,h), and we identify a distinguished "contact element" in this group which may be used to establish the tightness or non-fillability of contact structures compatible with (S,h). Our construction generalizes the relationship between the reduced Khovanov homology …

This paper investigates the symplectic and contact topology associated to circular spherical divisors. We classify, up to toric equivalence, all concave circular spherical divisors $D$ that can be embedded symplectically into a closed symplectic 4-manifold and show they are all realized as symplectic log Calabi-Yau p…

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 …

Using the relation between Khovanov homology and the Heegaard Floer homology of branched double covers, we show how Khovanov homology can be used to establish tightness of branched double covers of certain transverse knots. We give examples of several infinite families of knots whose branched covers are tight for Khova…

An isolated complex surface singularity induces a canonical contact structure on its link. In this paper, we initiate the study of the existence problem of Stein cobordisms between these contact structures depending on the properties of singularities. As a first step we construct an explicit Stein cobordism from any co…

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…