Related papers: On Non-Separating Contact Hypersurfaces in Symplec…

We construct the first examples of hypersurfaces in any contact manifold of dimension 5 and larger that cannot be $C^2$-approximated by convex hypersurfaces, contrasting sharply with the foundational results of Giroux in dimension $3$ and…

We introduce the cutting construction of possibly non-compact symplectic toric manifolds, in particular, toric symplectic cones that correspond to a weakly convex good cone. Since the symplectization of a toric contact manifold is a toric…

We give new examples of closed smooth 4-manifolds which support singular metrics of nonpositive curvature, but no smooth ones, thereby answering affirmatively a question of Gromov. The obstruction comes from patterns of incompressible…

We first study symplectically embedded curves in symplectic surfaces with high self-intersection numbers compared to their genus. We prove in two different ways that such a curve completely determines both the diffeomorphism type of the…

We construct simply connected, minimal, symplectic 4-manifolds with exotic smooth structures and each with one Seiberg-Witten basic class up to sign, on the Noether line and between the Noether and half Noether lines by star surgeries…

In this paper we classify symplectic Lefschetz fibrations (with empty base locus) on a four-manifold which is the product of a three-manifold with a circle. This result provides further evidence in support of the following conjecture…

The purpose of this article is twofold. First we outline a general construction scheme for producing simply-connected minimal symplectic 4-manifolds with small Euler characteristics. Using this scheme, we illustrate how to obtain…

Let E(1)_K denote the closed 4-manifold that is homotopy equivalent (hence homeomorphic) to the rational elliptic surface E(1) and is obtained by performing Fintushel-Stern knot surgery on E(1) using a knot K in S^3. We construct an…

We show that two properly embedded compact surfaces in an orientable 4-manifold are cobordant if and only if they are $\mathbb{Z}/2$-homologous and either the 4-manifold has boundary or the surfaces have the same normal Euler number. If the…

We study topological properties of log-symplectic structures and produce examples of compact manifolds with such structures. Notably we show that several symplectic manifolds do not admit log-symplectic structures and several log-symplectic…

We prove necessary and sufficient conditions for a smooth surface in a 4-manifold X to be pseudoholomorphic with respect to some almost complex structure on X. This provides a systematic approach to the construction of pseudoholomorphic…

In this article we show that every closed oriented smooth 4-manifold can be decomposed into two codimension zero submanifolds (one with reversed orientation) so that both pieces are exact Kahler manifolds with strictly pseudoconvex…

Symplectic 4-manifolds $(X,\omega)$ with $b_+{=}1$ are roughly classified by the canonical class $K$ and the symplectic form $\omega$ depending upon the sign of $K^2$ and $K\cdot \omega$. Examples are known for each category except for the…

We develop a technique for gluing relative trisection diagrams of $4$-manifolds with nonempty connected boundary to obtain trisection diagrams for closed $4$-manifolds. As an application, we describe a trisection of any closed $4$-manifold…

We show that any symplectic filling of the standard contact submanifold $(\mathbb{S}^{2n-1},\xi_{\mathrm{std}})$ of $(\mathbb{S}^{2n+1},\xi_{\mathrm{std}})$ in $(\mathbb{D}^{n+1},\omega_{\mathrm{std}})$ is smoothly unknotted if $n\ge 2$. We…

Two constructions of contact manifolds are presented: (i) products of S^1 with manifolds admitting a suitable decomposition into two exact symplectic pieces and (ii) fibre connected sums along isotropic circles. Baykur has found a…

We exhibit many examples of closed symplectic manifolds on which there is an autonomous Hamiltonian whose associated flow has no nonconstant periodic orbits (the only previous explicit example in the literature was the torus T^2n (n\geq 2)…

A long-standing conjecture asserts that any Anosov diffeomorphism of a closed manifold is finitely covered by a diffeomorphism which is topologically conjugate to a hyperbolic automorphism of a nilpotent manifold. In this paper, we show…

We develop the details of a surgery theory for contact manifolds of arbitrary dimension via convex structures, extending the 3-dimensional theory developed by Giroux. The theory is analogous to that of Weinstein manifolds in symplectic…

In this second paper of a two-part series, we prove that whenever a contact 3-manifold admits a uniform spinal open book decomposition with planar pages, its (weak, strong and/or exact) symplectic and Stein fillings can be classified up to…