Related papers: Infinitely many small exotic Stein fillings
We show that there exist infinitely many pairwise distinct non-closed G_2-manifolds (some of which have holonomy full G_2) such that they admit co-oriented contact structures and have co-oriented contact submanifolds which are also…
We study the possibility of realizing exotic smooth structures on punctured simply connected $4$-manifolds as leaves of a codimension one foliation on a compact manifold. In particular, we show the existence of uncountably many smooth open…
We use spinal open books to construct contact manifolds with infinitely many different Weinstein fillings in any odd dimension $> 1$, which were previously unknown for dimensions equal to $4n+1$. The argument does not involve understanding…
We study exotic smoothings of open 4-manifolds using the minimal genus function and its analog for end homology. While traditional techniques in open 4-manifold smoothing theory give no control of minimal genera, we make progress by using…
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…
It is known that every exotic smooth structure on a simply connected closed 4-manifold is determined by a codimention zero compact contractible Stein submanifold and an involution on its boundary. Such a pair is called a cork. In this…
We show that for any finitely presented group $G$, there is a simply connected closed 4-manifold containing an infinite family of topologically isotopic but smoothly inequivalent 2-links whose 2-link group is $G$. We also show that, if $G$…
We prove that if a contact manifold $(M,\xi)$ is supported by a planar open book, then Euler characteristic and signature of any Stein filling of $(M,\xi)$ is bounded. We also prove a similar finiteness result for contact manifolds…
We show that, given a closed integral symplectic manifold $(\Sigma, \omega)$ of dimension $2n \geq 4$, for every integer $k>\int_{\Sigma}\omega^{n}$, the Boothby-Wang bundle over $(\Sigma, k\omega)$ carries no Stein fillable contact…
We introduce a variant of contact homology for convex open contact manifolds. As an application, we prove the existence of (in fact, infinitely many) exotic tight contact structures on $\mathbb{R}^{2n-1}$ for all $n>2$.
We continue our study of contact structures on manifolds of dimension at least five using complex surgery theory. We show that in each dimension 2q+1 > 3 there are 'maximal' almost contact manifolds to which there is a Stein cobordism from…
We show that any topological, closed, oriented, non-spin $4$-manifold with fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}_{4k}$ and $\min(b_2^+, b_2^-)\geq 15$, has either none or infinitely many distinct smooth structures. Furthermore, we construct…
We show that any closed oriented 3-manifold can be topologically embedded in some simply-connected closed symplectic 4-manifold, and that it can be made a smooth embedding after one stabilization. As a corollary of the proof we show that…
We prove that Stein surfaces with boundary coincide up to orientation preserving diffeomorphisms with simple branched coverings of $\B^4$ whose branch set is a positive braided surface. As a consequence, we have that a smooth oriented…
We show that, for each integer n, there exist infinitely many pairs of n-framed knots representing homeomorphic but non-diffeomorphic (Stein) 4-manifolds, which are the simplest possible exotic 4-manifolds regarding handlebody structures.…
We show that only finitely many links in a closed 3-manifold share the same complement, up to twists along discs and annuli. Using the same techniques, we prove that by adding 2-handles on the same link we get only finitely many smooth…
We prove that there exist infinitely many contractible compact smooth $4$-manifolds $C$ that admit absolutely exotic diffeomorphisms of infinite order in $\pi_0(\mathrm{Diff}(C))$. By ``absolutely", we mean that isotopies are not required…
We prove that the contact structures on Y= dX induced by non-homotopic Stein structures on the 4-manifold X have distinct Heegaard Floer invariants.
We make some elementary observations concerning subcritically Stein fillable contact structures on 5-manifolds. Specifically, we determine the diffeomorphism type of such contact manifolds in the case the fundamental group is finite cyclic,…
We prove that all flexible Weinstein fillings of a given contact manifold with vanishing first Chern class have isomorphic integral cohomology; in certain cases, we prove that all flexible fillings are symplectomorphic. As an application,…