arXiv research

Survey of Weinstein symplectic manifolds, old and new.

New tools classify symplectic fillings of contact 3-manifolds.

New geometric constructions for contact manifolds, not symplectically fillable.

Study symplectic structures on open 4-manifolds with distinct primitive cohomologies.

The study describes Lefschetz-Bott fibrations on symplectic manifolds and their applications.

We study neighborhoods of configurations of symplectic surfaces in symplectic 4-manifolds. We show that suitably `positive' configurations have neighborhoods with concave boundaries and we explicitly describe open book decompositions of the boundaries supporting the associated negative contact structures. This is used …

The paper explores spaces of Kähler and symplectic forms on 4-manifolds.

Given two open books with equal pages we show the existence of an exact symplectic cobordism whose negative end equals the disjoint union of the contact manifolds associated to the given open books, and whose positive end induces the contact manifold associated to the open book with the same page and concatenated monod…

The study proves conditions for symplectic torus actions on manifolds with non-contractible orbits.

This paper classifies symplectic and Stein fillings of contact 3-manifolds with spinal open book decompositions.

We use the minimal coupling procedure of Sternberg and Weinstein and our pseudo-symplectic capacity theory to prove that every closed symplectic submanifold in any symplectic manifold has an open neighborhood with finite ($π_1$-sensitive) Hofer-Zehnder symplectic capacity. Consequently, the Weinstein conjecture holds n…

Starting from a Heegaard splitting of a three-manifold, we use Lagrangian Floer homology to construct a three-manifold invariant, in the form of a relatively Z/8-graded abelian group. Our motivation is to have a well-defined symplectic side of the Atiyah-Floer Conjecture, for arbitrary three-manifolds. The symplectic m…

Study shows bounds on symplectic fillings for spinal open book decompositions.

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 topology of symplectic 4-manifolds is related to that of singular plane curves via the concept of branched covers. Thus, various classification problems concerning symplectic 4-manifolds can be reformulated as questions about singular plane curves. Moreover, using braid monodromy, these can in turn be reformulated …

The paper constructs open book structures and contact forms on moment-angle manifolds.

Study of higher-dimensional contact manifolds and their properties.

We show that under appropriate hypotheses, a plumbing of symplectic surfaces in a symplectic 4-manifold admits strongly convex neighborhoods. Moreover the neighborhoods are Lefschetz fibered with an easily-described open book on the boundary supporting the induced contact structure. We point out some applications to cu…

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…

Proves Arnold conjecture for singular symplectic manifolds using novel techniques.

A log symplectic manifold is a Poisson manifold which is generically nondegenerate. We develop two methods for constructing the symplectic groupoids of log symplectic manifolds. The first is a blow-up construction, corresponding to the notion of an elementary modification of a Lie algebroid along a subalgebroid. The se…

Solves Calabi-Yau equation on symplectic manifolds using measurable Kahler metrics.

Embeds complex 3-manifolds into symplectic space.

By a special symplectic connection we mean a torsion free connection which is either the Levi-Civita connection of a Bochner-Kähler metric of arbitrary signature, a Bochner-bi-Lagrangian connection, a connection of Ricci type or a connection with special symplectic holonomy. A manifold or orbifold with such a connectio…

Abstract collects open problems in billiards and symplectic geometry.

This paper constructs symplectic surfaces in 4-manifolds with transversal intersections.

Floer theory for Lagrangians in open symplectic manifolds with smooth divisors.

We consider the problem of the symplectic realization of a Poisson-Nijenhuis manifold. By applying a new technique developed by M. Crainic and I. Marcut for the study of the above problem in the case of a Poisson manifold, we establish the existence, under a condition, of a nondegenerate Poisson-Nijenhuis structure on …

We show that, for any two orientable smooth open 4-manifolds $X_0,X_1$ which are homeomorphic, their cotangent bundles $T^*X_0,T^*X_1$ are symplectomorphic with their canonical symplectic structure. In particular, for any smooth manifold $R$ homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^4$, the standard Stein structure on $T^*R$ is Stei…

Study confoliations' symplectic fillability, finding obstructions.

Bourgeois structures are tight in 5D and provide symplectic fillability obstructions.

While symplectic manifolds have no local invariants, they do admit many global numerical invariants. Prominent among them are the so-called symplectic capacities. Different capacities are defined in different ways, and so relations between capacities often lead to surprising relations between different aspects of sympl…

In this article, we initiate a geometric measure theoretic approach to symplectic Hodge theory. In particular, we apply one of the central results in geometric measure theory, the Federer-Fleming deformation theorem, together with the cohomology theory of normal cur- rents on a differential manifold, to establish a fun…

New symplectic scheme speeds up RMHMC.

New contact manifolds with many fillings found.

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…

Constructs Poisson structures with compact support on manifolds.

A survey of finite group actions on symplectic 4-manifolds is given with a special emphasis on results and questions concerning smooth or symplectic classification of group actions, group actions and exotic smooth structures, and homological rigidity and boundedness of group actions. We also take this opportunity to in…

First example of a hyperbolic 4-orbifold underlying $\mathbb{P}^2$.

Let $M$ be a projective toric manifold. We prove two results concerning respectively Kaehler-Einstein submanifolds of M and symplectic embeddings of the standard euclidean ball in M. Both results use the well-known fact that M contains an open dense subset biholomorphic to C^n.

We give an overview of various recent results concerning the topology of symplectic 4-manifolds and singular plane curves, using branched covers and isotopy problems as a unifying theme. While this paper does not contain any new results, we hope that it can serve as an introduction to the subject, and will stimulate in…

In this note we make several observations concerning symplectic fillings. In particular we show that a (strongly or weakly) semi-fillable contact structure is fillable and any filling embeds as a symplectic domain in a closed symplectic manifold. We also relate properties of the open book decomposition of a contact man…

We consider the moduli space MN of flat unitary connections on an open Kaehler manifold U (complement of a divisor with normal crossings) with restrictions on their monodromy transformations. Using intersection and L2 cohomologies with degenerating coefficients we construct a natural symplectic form F on MN. When U is …

We prove that there exists no a priori bound on the Euler characteristic of a closed symplectic 4-manifold coming solely from the genus of a compatible Lefschetz pencil on it, nor is there a similar bound for Stein fillings of a contact 3-manifold coming from the genus of a compatible open book --- except possibly for …

The paper studies deformations of symplectic forms and Lagrangian submanifolds.

We investigate the notion of symplectic divisorial compactification for symplectic 4-manifolds with either convex or concave type boundary. This is motivated by the notion of compactifying divisors for open algebraic surfaces. We give a sufficient and necessary criterion, which is simple and also works in higher dimens…

We study open books on three manifolds which are compatible with an overtwisted contact structure. We show that the existence of certain arcs, called sobering arcs, is a sufficient condition for an open book to be overtwisted, and is necessary up to stabilization by positive Hopf-bands. Using these techniques we prove …

This is the first of two papers devoted to showing how the rich algebraic formalism of Eliashberg-Givental-Hofer's symplectic field theory (SFT) can be used to define higher algebraic structures on the symplectic cohomology of open symplectic manifolds. Using the SFT of Hamiltonian mapping tori we show how to define a …