English

Complementary legs and symplectic rational balls

Geometric Topology 2026-03-04 v2 Symplectic Geometry

Abstract

We show that a small Seifert fibered space with complementary legs does not symplectically bound a rational homology ball for at least one choice of orientation. In the case e01e_0\leq -1, we characterize when a small Seifert fibered space with uniquely complementary legs symplectically bounds a rational homology ball. In the case e00e_0\geq 0, we characterize when a small Seifert fibered space with complementary legs, equipped with a balanced contact structure, symplectically bounds a rational homology ball. Our results highlight a sharp contrast with the smooth category, where many more such Seifert fibered spaces are known to bound smooth rational homology balls. As a consequence of the results above, we also complete the classification of contact structures on oriented spherical 33-manifolds that admit symplectic rational homology ball fillings. In particular, we show that a closed, oriented 33-manifold with finite fundamental group admits at most six contact structures, up to isotopy, which are symplectically fillable by rational homology balls.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.04513,
  title  = {Complementary legs and symplectic rational balls},
  author = {John B. Etnyre and Burak Ozbagci and Bülent Tosun},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.04513},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

43 pages, 13 figures, v2: corrected some errors and added some new corollaries

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:24:38.245Z