arXiv research

In this note we make several observations concerning symplectic cobordisms. Among other things we show that every contact 3-manifold has infinitely many concave symplectic fillings and that all overtwisted contact 3-manifolds are ``symplectic cobordism equivalent.''

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 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 …

The paper classifies symplectic fillings of lens spaces and constructs cobordisms.

We discuss the existence and non-existence of cobordisms between symplectic surface bundles over the circle.

Study symplectic cobordisms to empty sets, called hats, in 3-sphere and blow-ups.

We establish an existence $h$-principle for symplectic cobordisms of dimension $2n>4$ with concave overtwisted contact boundary.

Periodic Floer homology (PFH) is a Gromov-Floer type invariant for fibered three-manifolds with Hamiltonian structures. The cobordism maps on periodic Floer homology induced by symplectic cobordisms are currently only defined indirectly by using Seiberg-Witten theory. In this paper, we investigate the cobordism maps in…

A symplectic manifold $(M,ω)$ is called {\em (symplectically) uniruled} if there is a nonzero genus zero GW invariant involving a point constraint. We prove that symplectic uniruledness is invariant under symplectic blow-up and blow-down. This theorem follows from a general Relative/Absolute correspondence for a symple…

GRID invariants block certain Lagrangian cobordisms in 3D.

New invariant stops certain types of geometric transformations.

Locally symplectic structure found on Kerr space-time.

Researchers develop methods to construct Lagrangian cobordisms between Legendrian knots.

Given a symplectic manifold $(M^{2n},ω)$ we study Lagrangian cobordisms $V\subset E$ where $E$ is the total space of a Lefschetz fibration having $M$ as generic fiber. We prove a generation result for these cobordisms in the appropriate derived Fukaya category. As a corollary, we analyze the relations among the Lagrang…

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…

We prove that Manolescu and Woodward's Symplectic Instanton homology, and its twisted versions are natural, and define maps associated to four dimensional cobordisms within this theory. This allows one to define representations of the mapping class group and the fundamental group of a 3-manifold, and to have a geometri…

Study obstructs symplectic structures on Mazur manifolds.

The main result of this paper states that a symplectic s-cobordism of elliptic 3-manifolds is diffeomorphic to a product (assuming a canonical contact structure on the boundary). Based on this theorem, we conjecture that a smooth s-cobordism of elliptic 3-manifolds is smoothly a product if its universal cover is smooth…

Symplectic Khovanov homology is an invariant of oriented links defined by Seidel and Smith and conjectured to be isomorphic to Khovanov homology. I define morphisms (up to a global sign ambiguity) between symplectic Khovanov homology groups, corresponding to isotopy classes of smooth link cobordisms in 4D between a fix…

We introduce constructions of exact Lagrangian cobordisms with cylindrical Legendrian ends and study their invariants which arise from Symplectic Field Theory. A pair $(X,L)$ consisting of an exact symplectic manifold $X$ and an exact Lagrangian cobordism $L\subset X$ which agrees with cylinders over Legendrian links $…

We construct an oriented cobordism between moduli spaces of flat connections on the three holed sphere and disjoint unions of toric varieties, together with a closed two-form which restricts to the symplectic forms on the ends. As applications, we obtain formulas for mixed Pontrjagin numbers and Witten's formulas for s…

Regular sliceness implies once-stably decomposable sliceness in symplectizations.

In this article, we reformulate the cobordism map of embedded contact homology, which is induced by exact symplectic cobordism and defined as direct limit of homomorphisms called filtered ECH cobordism map. The filtered ECH cobordism map is defined by counting embedded holomorphic curves with zero ECH index and we prov…

We give a definition of symplectic homology for pairs of filled Liouville cobordisms, and show that it satisfies analogues of the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms except for the dimension axiom. The resulting long exact sequence of a pair generalizes various earlier long exact sequences such as the handle attaching sequence, …

Embeds 3-manifolds in symplectic 4-manifolds with constraints.

We prove that the LOSS and GRID invariants of Legendrian links in knot Floer homology behave in certain functorial ways with respect to decomposable Lagrangian cobordisms in the symplectization of the standard contact structure on $\mathbb{R}^3$. Our results give new, computable, and effective obstructions to the exist…

We discuss Witten's formulas for the symplectic volumes of moduli spaces of flat connections on 2-manifolds from the viewpoint of Hamiltonian cobordism as introduced by Ginzburg-Guillemin-Karshon.

New flow category for contact manifolds from Reeb orbits.

Unique symplectic fillings of odd spheres' cotangent bundles proven.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce Liouville hypersurfaces in contact manifolds, which generalize ribbons of Legendrian graphs and pages of supporting open books. Liouville hypersurfaces are used to define a gluing operation for contact manifolds called the Liouville connect sum. Performing this operation on a c…

Symplectic instanton homology is an invariant for closed oriented three-manifolds, defined by Manolescu and Woodward, which conjecturally corresponds to a symplectic version of a variant of Floer's instanton homology. In this thesis we study the behaviour of this invariant under connected sum, Dehn surgery, and four-di…

In this article, we investigate the cobordism maps on periodic Floer homology (PFH). In the first part of the paper, we define the cobordism maps on PFH via Seiberg Witten theory as well as the isomorphism between PFH and Seiberg Witten cohomology. Furthermore, we show that the maps satisfy the holomorphic curve axiom.…

The contact invariant is an element in the monopole Floer homology groups of an oriented closed three manifold canonically associated to a given contact structure. A non-vanishing contact invariant implies that the original contact structure is tight, so understanding its behavior under symplectic cobordisms is of inte…

Study of higher-dimensional contact manifolds and their properties.

Lipshitz, Ozsváth and Thurston defined a bordered Heegaard Floer invariant CFDA for 3-manifolds with two boundary components, including mapping cylinders for surface diffeomorphisms. We define a related invariant for certain 4-dimensional cobordisms with corners, by associating a morphism F from CFDA(f) to CFDA(g) to e…

In arXiv:1611.09927, we constructed a well-defined Lagrangian Floer invariant for any closed, oriented $3$-manifold $Y$ via the symplectic geometry of so-called traceless $\mathrm{SU}(2)$-character varieties. This invariant, $\mathrm{SI}(Y)$, which we refer to as the symplectic instanton homology of $Y$, was also shown…

Each lens space has a canonical contact structure which lifts to the distribution of complex lines on the three-sphere. In this paper, we show that a symplectic homology cobordism between two lens spaces, which is given with the canonical contact structure on the boundary, must be diffeomorphic to the product of a lens…

Given a symplectic manifold M, we consider a category with objects finite ordered families of Lagrangian submanifolds of M (subject to certain additional constraints) and with morphisms Lagrangian cobordisms relating them. We construct a functor that maps this category to a variant of the derived Fukaya category of M i…

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…

Paper proves h-principles for symplectic structures and foliations.

In the symplectization of standard contact $3$-space, $\mathbb R \times \mathbb R^3$, it is known that an orientable Lagrangian cobordism between a Legendrian knot and itself, also known as an orientable Lagrangian endocobordism for the Legendrian knot, must have genus $0$. We show that any Legendrian knot has a non-or…

In [R2] and [RO] the Arnold conjecture for closed symplectic manifolds with trivial second homotopy group was proved. This proof used surgery and cobordism theory. Here we give a purely cohomological proof of this result.

We prove that any minimal weak symplectic filling of the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of a nonorientable closed surface other than the real projective plane is s-cobordant rel boundary to the disk cotangent bundle of the surface. If the nonorientable surface is the Klein bottle, then we show…

We prove that a real Lagrangian submanifold in a closed symplectic manifold is unique up to cobordism. We then discuss the classification of real Lagrangians in $\mathbb{C} P^2$ and $S^2\times S^2$. In particular, we show that a real Lagrangian in $\mathbb{C} P^2$ is unique up to Hamiltonian isotopy and that a real Lag…

We use symplectic cobordism, and the localization result of Ginzburg, Guillemin, and Karshon, to find a wall-crossing formula for the signature of regular symplectic quotients of Hamiltonian torus actions. The formula is recursive, depending ultimately on fixed point data. In the case of a circle action, we obtain a fo…

We give two constructions of surfaces in simply-connected 4-manifolds with non simply-connected complements. One is an iteration of the twisted rim surgery introduced by the first author. We also construct, for any group G satisfying some simple conditions, a simply-connected symplectic manifold containing a symplectic…

The main purpose of this paper is to summarize the basic ingredients, illustrated with examples, of a pseudoholomorphic curve theory for symplectic 4-orbifolds. These are extensions of relevant work of Gromov, McDuff and Taubes on symplectic 4-manifolds concerning pseudoholomorphic curves and Seiberg-Witten theory. The…

The technique of generating families produces obstructions to the existence of embedded Lagrangian cobordisms between Legendrian submanifolds in the symplectizations of 1-jet bundles. In fact, generating families may be used to construct a TQFT-like theory that, in addition to giving the aforementioned obstructions, yi…