English

Bypass attachments and homotopy classes of 2-plane fields in contact topology

Geometric Topology 2011-05-16 v2

Abstract

We use the generalized Pontryagin-Thom construction to analyze the effect of attaching a bypass on the homotopy class of the contact structure. In particular, given a 3-dimensional contact manifold with convex boundary, we show that the bypass triangle attachment changes the homotopy class of the contact structure relative to the boundary, and the difference is measured by the Hopf invariant.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1105.2348,
  title  = {Bypass attachments and homotopy classes of 2-plane fields in contact topology},
  author = {Yang Huang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.2348},
  year   = {2011}
}