Related papers: Contact handle decompositions
In this note, we use the recent work of Honda-Kazez-Matic [HKM] to prove that a closed contact 3-manifold admitting a compatible open book decomposition with a nontrivial monodromy which can be presented as a product of left handed Dehn…
A real 3-manifold is a smooth 3-manifold together with an orientation preserving smooth involution, which is called a real structure. A real contact 3-manifold is a real 3-manifold with a contact distribution that is antisymmetric with…
We give examples of tight high dimensional contact manifolds admitting a contactomorphism whose powers are all smoothly isotopic but not contact-isotopic to the identity. This is a generalization of an observation in dimension 3 by Gompf,…
The aim of this paper is to give an alternative proof of a theorem about the existence of contact structures on five-manifolds due to Geiges. This theorem asserts that simply-connected five-manifolds admit a contact structure in every…
In this article we show that in any dimension there exist infinitely many pairs of formally contact isotopic isocontact embeddings into the standard contact sphere which are not contact isotopic. This is the first example of rigidity for…
We construct examples in any odd dimension of contact manifolds with finite and non-zero algebraic torsion (in the sense of Latschev-Wendl), which are therefore tight and do not admit strong symplectic fillings. We prove that Giroux torsion…
We show that certain classes of contact 3-manifolds do not admit non-separating contact type embeddings into any closed symplectic 4-manifolds, e.g. this is the case for all contact manifolds that are (partially) planar or have Giroux…
We generalize the familiar notions of overtwistedness and Giroux torsion in 3-dimensional contact manifolds, defining an infinite hierarchy of local filling obstructions called planar torsion, whose integer-valued order $k \ge 0$ can be…
This article sketches various ideas in contact geometry that have become useful in low-dimensional topology. Specifically we (1) outline the proof of Eliashberg and Thurston's results concerning perturbations of foliatoins into contact…
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 prove that there are homology three-spheres that bound definite four-manifolds, but any such bounding four-manifold must be built out of many handles. The argument uses the homology cobordism invariant $\Gamma$ from instanton Floer…
Given any smooth fibration of the unit 3-sphere by great circles, we show that the distribution of 2-planes orthogonal to the great circle fibres is a tight contact structure, a fact well known in the special case of the Hopf fibrations.…
In discrete geometry, the contact number of a given finite number of non-overlapping spheres was introduced as a generalization of Newton's kissing number. This notion has not only led to interesting mathematics, but has also found…
In this article, we find the complete list of all contact structures (up to isotopy) on closed three-manifolds which are supported by an open book decomposition having planar pages with three (but not less) boundary components. We…
We establish a parametric extension $h$-principle for overtwisted contact structures on manifolds of all dimensions, which is the direct generalization of the $3$-dimensional result from \cite{Eli89}. It implies, in particular, that any…
This is a survey on contact open books and contact Dehn surgery. The relation between these two concepts is discussed, and various applications are sketched, e.g. the monodromy of Stein fillable contact 3-manifolds, the Giroux-Goodman proof…
In this short note, we give examples of binding sums of contact 3-manifolds that do not preserve properties such as tightness or symplectic fillability. We also prove vanishing of the Heegaard Floer contact invariant for an infinite family…
We provide a complete set of two moves that suffice to relate any two open book decompositions of a given 3-manifold. One of the moves is the usual plumbing with a positive or negative Hopf band, while the other one is a special local…
If a closed 3-manifold M supports a closed, nonsingular, irrational 1-form which linearly deforms into contact forms, then M supports a K-contact form. On the 3-torus, a closed nonsingular 1-form deforms linearly into contact forms if and…
We prove that every closed, connected contact 3-manifold can be obtained from the 3-sphere with its standard contact structure by contact surgery of coefficient plus or minus 1 along a Legendrian link. As a corollary, we derive a result of…