arXiv research

Study tight contact structures on specific 3-manifolds.

The study finds algebraically overtwisted tight 3-manifolds via contact surgeries.

Whether every hyperbolic 3-manifold admits a tight contact structure or not is an open question. Many hyperbolic 3-manifolds contain taut foliations and taut foliations can be perturbed to tight contact structures. The first examples of hyperbolic 3-manifolds without taut foliations were constructed by Roberts, Sharesh…

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

We present a sketch of the proof of the following theorems: (1) Every 3-manifold has only finitely many homotopy classes of 2-plane fields which carry tight contact structures. (2) Every closed atoroidal 3-manifold carries finitely many isotopy classes of tight contact structures.

This paper describes a characterization of tightness of closed contact 3-manifolds in terms of supporting open book decompositions. The main result is that tightness of a closed contact 3-manifold is preserved under Legendrian surgery.

We determine the closed, oriented Seifert fibered 3-manifolds which carry positive tight contact structures. Our main tool is a new non-vanishing criterion for the contact Ozsvath-Szabo invariant.

We show that an oriented elliptic 3-manifold admits a universally tight positive contact structure iff the corresponding group of deck transformations on $S^3$ preserves a standard contact structure pointwise. We also relate univerally tight contact structures on 3-manifolds covered by $S^3$ to the exceptional isomorph…

New 3D shapes found without certain special flows.

We propose in this paper a method for studying contact structures in 3-manifolds by means of branched surfaces. We explain what it means for a contact structure to be carried by a branched surface embedded in a 3-manifold. To make the transition from contact structures to branched surfaces, we first define auxiliary ob…

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 exhibit a 3-manifold which admits no tight contact structure.

Given a closed contact 3-manifold with a compatible Riemannian metric, we show that if the sectional curvature is 1/4-pinched, then the contact structure is universally tight. This result improves the Contact Sphere Theorem in [EKM12], where a 4/9-pinching constant was imposed. Some tightness results on positively curv…

We classify positive, tight contact structures on closed Seifert fibered 3-manifolds with base S^2, three singular fibers and e_0\geq 0.

A transverse knot exists in S^3 that covers all contact 3-manifolds.

We exhibit tight contact structures on 3-manifolds that do not admit any symplectic fillings.

We classify tight contact structures on the small Seifert fibered 3--manifold M(-1; r_1, r_2, r_3) with r_i in (0,1) and r_1, r_2 \geq 1/2. The result is obtained by combining convex surface theory with computations of contact Ozsvath--Szabo invariants. We also show that some of the tight contact structures on the mani…

We use convex decomposition theory to (1) reprove the existence of a universally tight contact structure on every irreducible 3-manifold with nonempty boundary, and (2) prove that every toroidal 3-manifold carries infinitely many nonisotopic, nonisomorphic tight contact structures.

We use the Ozsváth-Szabó contact invariants to distinguish between tight contact structures obtained by Legendrian surgeries on stabilized Legendrian links in tight contact 3-manifolds. We also discuss the implication of our result on the tight contact structures on the Brieskon homology spheres $-Σ(2,3,6n-1)$.

Upper bounds for Legendrian links in tight contact 3-manifolds.

New contactomorphisms found via Dehn twists on 3-manifold sums.

This paper begins the study of relations between Riemannian geometry and global properties of contact structures on 3-manifolds. In particular we prove an analog of the sphere theorem from Riemannian geometry in the setting of contact geometry. Specifically, if a given three dimensional contact manifold (M,ξ) admits a …

The Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariant is a complete classification invariant for tight contact structures on small Seifert fibered 3-manifolds which are L-spaces.

Let p and n be positive integers with p>1, and let E(p,n) be the oriented 3-manifold obtained by performing pn(p-1)-1 surgery on a positive torus knot of type (p, pn+1). We prove that E(2,n) does not carry tight contact structures for any n, while E(p,n) carries tight contact structures for any n and any odd p. In part…

It has been shown by V. Colin that every tight contact 3-manifold can be written as a connected sum of prime manifolds. Here we prove that the summands in this decomposition are unique up to order and contactomorphism.

In this article we present infinitely many 3-manifolds admitting infinitely many universally tight contact structures each with trivial Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariants. By known properties of these invariants the contact structures constructed here are non weakly symplectically fillable.

Two of the basic questions in contact topology are which manifolds admit tight contact structures, and on those that do, can we classify such structures. We present the first such classification on an infinite family of (mostly) hyperbolic 3-manifolds: surgeries on the figure-eight knot. We also determine which of the …

We consider the problem of realizing tight contact structures on closed orientable three-manifolds. By applying the theorems of Hofer et al., one may deduce tightness from dynamical properties of (Reeb) flows transverse to the contact structure. We detail how two classical constructions, Dehn surgery and branched cover…

In this paper, we study contact structures on any open 3-manifold V which is the interior of a compact 3-manifold. To do this, we introduce proper contact isotopy invariants called the slope at infinity and the division number at infinity. We first prove several classification theorems for T^2 x [0, \infty), T^2 x R, a…

Classifies convex disks with Legendrian boundary in overtwisted contact 3-manifolds.

Contractibility of tight contact structures on $S^3$ proven.

We show that the canonical contact structure on the link of a normal complex singularity is universally tight. As a corollary we show the existence of closed, oriented, atoroidal 3-manifolds with infinite fundamental groups which carry universally tight contact structures that are not deformations of taut (or Reebless)…

In this paper, we find infinite hyperbolic 3-manifolds that admit no weakly symplectically fillable contact structures, using tools in Heegaard Floer theory. We also remark that part of these manifolds do admit tight contact structures.

We produce the first examples of closed, tight contact 3-manifolds which become overtwisted after performing admissible transverse surgeries. Along the way, we clarify the relationship between admissible transverse surgery and Legendrian surgery. We use this clarification to study a new invariant of transverse knots - …

The paper classifies all tight contact structures on a solid torus.

Computes homotopy types of embedding spaces in tight contact 3-manifolds.

Let V be a closed 3-manifold. In this paper we prove that the homotopy classes of plane fields on V that contain tight contact structures are in finite number and that, if V is atoroidal, the isotopy classes of tight contact structures are also in finite number.

We take a first step towards understanding the relationship between foliations and universally tight contact structures on hyperbolic 3-manifolds. If a surface bundle over a circle has pseudo-Anosov holonomy, we obtain a classification of "extremal" tight contact structures. Specifically, there is exactly one contact s…

We investigate the line between tight and overtwisted for surgeries on fibred transverse knots in contact 3-manifolds. When the contact structure $ξ_K$ is supported by the fibred knot $K \subset M$, we obtain a characterisation of when negative surgeries result in a contact structure with non-vanishing Heegaard Floer c…

We study the effect of surgery on transverse knots in contact 3-manifolds. In particular, we investigate the effect of such surgery on open books, the Heegaard Floer contact invariant, and tightness. The overarching theme of this paper is to show that in many contexts, surgery on transverse knots is more natural than s…

The paper conjectures a 4D characterization of tight contact structures and proves it for certain cases.

We characterize L-spaces which are Seifert fibered over the 2-sphere in terms of taut foliations, transverse foliations and transverse contact structures. We give a sufficient condition for certain contact Seifert fibered 3-manifolds with e_0=-1 to have nonzero contact Ozsvath--Szabo invariants. This yields an algorith…

Introduces a new CR invariant for co-oriented contact structures on closed 3-manifolds

We show that every closed toroidal irreducible orientable 3-manifold carries infinitely many universally tight contact structures.

New contact structures found on Brieskorn spheres.

New evidence supports the Euler class one conjecture for tight contact structures.

Classifies real tight contact structures on lens spaces and solid tori.

The paper classifies tight contact structures on Seifert fiber spaces.