English

Legendrian ribbons in overtwisted contact structures

Geometric Topology 2007-08-09 v1

Abstract

We show that a null-homologous transverse knot K in the complement of an overtwisted disk in a contact 3-manifold is the boundary of a Legendrian ribbon if and only if it possesses a Seifert surface S such that the self-linking number of K with respect to S satisfies \sel(K,S)=χ(S)\sel(K,S)=-\chi(S). In particular, every null-homologous topological knot type in an overtwisted contact manifold can be represented by the boundary of a Legendrian ribbon. Finally, we show that a contact structure is tight if and only if every Legendrian ribbon minimizes genus in its relative homology class.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0708.1087,
  title  = {Legendrian ribbons in overtwisted contact structures},
  author = {S. Baader and K. Cieliebak and T. Vogel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0708.1087},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:05:47.133Z