arXiv research

New contact Kirby moves complete the set for contact surgery diagrams.

Kirby color defined in Khovanov homology for 4D handlebodies.

A theorem of Kirby states that two framed links in the 3-sphere produce orientation-preserving homeomorphic results of surgery if they are related by a sequence of stabilization and handle-slide moves. The purpose of the present paper is twofold: First, we give a sufficient condition for a sequence of handle-slides on …

We propose a means by which some categorifications can be evaluated at a root of unity. This is implemented using a suitable localization in the context of prior work by the authors on categorification of the Jones-Wenzl projectors. Within this construction we define objects, invariant under handle slides, which decate…

Bordered Heegaard Floer homology is an invariant for three-manifolds with boundary. In particular, this invariant associates to a handle decomposition of a surface F a differential graded algebra, and to an arc slide between two handle decompositions, a bimodule over the two algebras. In this paper, we describe these b…

A knot K in the 3-sphere is said to have Property nR if, whenever K is a component of an n-component link L and some integral surgery on L produces the connected sum of n copies of S^1 x S^2, there is a sequence of handle slides on L that converts L into a 0-framed unlink. The Generalized Property R Conjecture is that …

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…

Paper studies simplified trisections and their equivalence classes.

Paper disproves a theorem about Kauffman bracket skein module structure.

We describe various handle moves in contact surgery diagrams, notably contact analogues of the Kirby moves. As an application of these handle moves, we discuss the respective classifications of long and loose Legendrian knots.

Handles decompositions reveal new open book structures.

We exhibit a finite set of local moves that connect any two surgery presentations of the same 3-manifold via framed links in the three-sphere. The moves are handle-slides and blow-downs/ups of a particular simple kind.

A standard convexity condition on the boundary of a symplectic manifold involves an induced positive contact form (and contact structure) on the boundary; the corresponding concavity condition involves an induced negative contact form. We present two methods of symplectically attaching 2-handles to convex boundaries of…

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…

Holomorphic handle attaching proves complex surface properties.

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.

Researchers compute the Kauffman bracket skein module of a specific 3-manifold.

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 …

We propose a sliding surface for systems on the Lie group $SO(3)\times \mathbb{R}^3$ . The sliding surface is shown to be a Lie subgroup. The reduced-order dynamics along the sliding subgroup have an almost globally asymptotically stable equilibrium. The sliding surface is used to design a sliding-mode controller for t…

We give an explicit construction of the Honda--Kazez--Matić gluing maps in terms of contact handles. We use this to prove a duality result for turning a sutured manifold cobordism around, and to compute the trace in the sutured Floer TQFT. We also show that the decorated link cobordism maps on the hat version of link F…

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…

The stable Andrews-Curtis conjecture in combinatorial group theory is the statement that every balanced presentation of the trivial group can be simplified to the trivial form by elementary moves corresponding to "handle-slides" together with "stabilization" moves. Schoenflies conjecture is the statement that the compl…

For oriented manifolds of dimension at least 4 that are simply connected at infinity, it is known that end summing is a uniquely defined operation. Calcut and Haggerty showed that more complicated fundamental group behavior at infinity can lead to nonuniqueness. The present paper examines how and when uniqueness fails.…

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 propose a global invariant $σ_c$ for contact manifolds which admit a strictly pseudoconvex CR structure, analogous to the Yamabe invariant $σ$. We prove that this invariant is non-decreasing under handle attaching and under connected sum. We then give a lower bound on $σ_c$ in a particular case.

The paper analyzes the sliding regret of stochastic bandit algorithms.

We study the effect of Nielsen moves and their geometric counterparts, handle slides, on good boundary links. A collection of links, universal for 4-dimensional surgery, is shown to admit Seifert surfaces with trivial Lagrangian. They are good boundary links, with Seifert matrices of a more general form than in known c…

We obtain several results for (iterated) planar contact manifolds in higher dimensions: (1) Iterated planar contact manifolds are not weakly symplectically semi-fillable. This generalizes a 3-dimensional result of Etnyre to a higher-dimensional setting. (2) They do not arise as nonseparating weak contact-type hypersurf…

Presentations for involutions on non-orientable surfaces up to genus 5.

We define an invariant of contact 3-manifolds with convex boundary using Kronheimer and Mrowka's sutured monopole Floer homology theory (SHM). Our invariant can be viewed as a generalization of Kronheimer and Mrowka's contact invariant for closed contact 3-manifolds and as the monopole Floer analogue of Honda, Kazez, a…

PROPO tackles non-stationary MDPs with efficient policy optimization.

New GLB algorithm handles non-stationary data with forgetting.

We present a new operation to be performed on elements in a Garside group, called cyclic sliding, which is introduced to replace the well known cycling and decycling operations. Cyclic sliding appears to be a more natural choice, simplifying the algorithms concerning conjugacy in Garside groups and having nicer theoret…

Novel time series forecasting method using sliding window signatures.

We give a combinatorial description of the Legendrian contact homology algebra associated to a Legendrian link in $S^1\times S^2$ or any connected sum $\#^k(S^1\times S^2)$, viewed as the contact boundary of the Weinstein manifold obtained by attaching 1-handles to the 4-ball. In view of the surgery formula for symplec…

Proposes a sliding window method for better portfolio trading.

Paper simplifies proof of slide-equivalence in crown diagrams.

Optimizes sliding window approach for tracking Gaussian densities.

Let $N_{g}$ denote a closed nonorientable surface of genus $g$. For $g \geq 2$ the mapping class group $\mathcal{M}(N_{g})$ is generated by Dehn twists and one crosscap slide ($Y$-homeomorphism) or by Dehn twists and a crosscap transposition. Margalit and Schleimer observed that Dehn twists have nontrivial roots. We gi…

We show that the pre-order defined on the category of contact manifolds by arbitrary symplectic cobordisms is considerably less rigid than its counterparts for exact or Stein cobordisms: in particular, we exhibit large new classes of contact 3-manifolds which are symplectically cobordant to something overtwisted, or to…

We show that simple coverings of B^4 branched over ribbon surfaces up to certain local ribbon moves bijectively represent orientable 4-dimensional 2-handlebodies up to handle sliding and addition/deletion of cancelling handles. As a consequence, we obtain an equivalence theorem for simple coverings of S^3 branched over…

Small bubbles sliding on a boundary maintain half-spherical shape.

The topology of Stein surfaces and contact 3-manifolds is studied by means of handle decompositions. A simple characterization of homeomorphism types of Stein surfaces is obtained --- they correspond to open handlebodies with all handles of index lessthan or = 2. An uncountable collection of exotic R^4's is shown to ad…

In the last two decades, significant effort has been put in understanding and designing so-called structure-preserving numerical methods for the simulation of mechanical systems. Geometric integrators attempt to preserve the geometry associated to the original system as much as possible, such as the structure of the co…

Kirby proved that two framed links in S^3 give orientation-preserving homeomorphic results of surgery if and only if these two links are related by a sequence of two kinds of moves called stabilizations and handle-slides. Fenn and Rourke gave a necessary and sufficient condition for two framed links in a closed, orient…

We present an approach to constructing broken Lefschetz fibrations (BLFs) $f:X\rightarrow S^2$ from a handle decomposition of a 4-manifold $X$. Given a handle decomposition as input these techniques yield explicit descriptions of the BLFs, and do not rely on classification results from contact topology or the choice of…

We show that reducible braids which are, in a Garside-theoretical sense, as simple as possible within their conjugacy class, are also as simple as possible in a geometric sense. More precisely, if a braid belongs to a certain subset of its conjugacy class which we call the stabilized set of sliding circuits, and if it …

The abstract discusses applications of Menke's JSJ decomposition to symplectic fillings of various 3-manifolds.