arXiv research

The study finds many tight contact structures on hyperbolic 3-spheres.

Surgery on knots always admits a tight contact structure.

The study finds tight contact structures without fillings in high dimensions.

Classifies tight contact structures on surgeries of the Whitehead link.

In this paper we develop a method for studying tight contact structures on lens spaces. We then derive uniqueness and non-existence statements for tight contact structures with certain (half) Euler classes on lens spaces. We also prove that any lens space admits only finitely many tight contact structures.

Study tight contact structures on specific 3-manifolds.

Discusses the tight versus overtwisted dichotomy in 3D contact geometry.

Classifies tight contact structures on specific Seifert fibered manifolds.

Study proves all left-invariant contact structures on 3D Lie groups are tight.

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…

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

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

Study non-fibered links' relation to tight contact structures.

We prove gluing theorems for tight contact structures. In particular, we rederive (as special cases) gluing theorems due to Colin and Makar-Limanov, and present an algorithm for determining whether a given contact structure on a handlebody is tight. As applications, we construct a tight contact structure on a genus 4 h…

We show the equivalence of several notions in the theory of taut foliations and the theory of tight contact structures. We prove equivalence, in certain cases, of existence of tight contact structures and taut foliations.

New contact structures on folded sums of contact mapping tori are tight under certain conditions.

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

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

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…

Given a contact structure on a manifold $V$ together with a supporting open book decomposition, Bourgeois gave an explicit construction for a contact structure on $V \times \mathbb{T}^2$. We prove that all such structures are universally tight in dimension $5$, independent on whether the original contact manifold is ti…

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

We prove that there is a unique real tight contact structure on the 3-ball with convex boundary up to isotopy through real tight contact structures. We also give a partial classification of the real tight solid tori with the real structure being antipodal map along longitudinal and the identity along meridional directi…

We employ cut and paste contact topological techniques to classify some tight contact structures on the closed, oriented genus-2 surface times the interval. A boundary condition is specified so that the Euler class of the of the contact structure vanishes when evaluated on each boundary component. We prove that there e…

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 $-Σ(2,3,6n-1)$.

We compute the Ozsváth--Szabó contact invariants for all tight contact structures on the manifolds -Σ(2,3,6n-1).

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 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.

The paper classifies tight contact structures on Seifert fiber spaces.

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

We study weak versus strong symplectic fillability of some tight contact structures on torus bundles over the circle. In particular, we prove that almost all of these tight contact structures are weakly, but not strongly symplectically fillable. For the 3-torus this theorem was established by Eliashberg.

Classifies tight contact structures with special symmetries.

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

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…

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

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.

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)…

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 …

We study some properties of transverse contact structures on small Seifert manifolds, and we apply them to the classification of tight contact structures on a family of small Seifert manifolds.

New contact structures found on Brieskorn spheres.

Using contact surgery we define families of contact structures on certain Seifert fibered three-manifolds. We prove that all these contact structures are tight using contact Ozsath-Szabo invariants. We use these examples to show that, given a natural number n, there exists a Seifert fibered three-manifold carrying at l…

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…

Study finds all Brieskorn spheres with at most two fillable contact structures.

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…

Let Y(r) be the closed, oriented three-manifold obtained by performing rational r-surgery on the right-handed trefoil knot in the three-sphere. Using contact surgery and the Heegaard Floer contact invariants we construct positive, tight contact structures on Y(r) for every r not equal to 1. This implies, in particular,…

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.

Study contact structures on specific manifolds, proving infinite non-isotopic structures and tight/overtwisted classifications.

The support norm $sn(ξ)$ of a contact structure $ξ$ is the minimum of the negative Euler characteristics of the pages of the open books supporting $ξ$. In this paper we prove additivity of the support norm for tight contact structures.