Related papers: Topological methods in 3-dimensional contact geome…

We study low-dimensional problems in topology and geometry via a study of contact and Cauchy-Riemann ($CR$) structures. A contact structure is called spherical if it admits a compatible spherical $CR$ structure. We will talk about spherical…

Let $\xi$ be a $\tau$-invariant contact structure on $N(W) = \mathbb{R}_{\tau} \times W$ for a closed, $2n$-dimensional manifold $W$, so that each $\{\tau\} \times W$ is a convex hypersurface. When $n=1$, Giroux's criterion provides a…

Cosymplectic and normal almost contact structures are analogues of symplectic and complex structures that can be defined on 3-manifolds. Their existence imposes strong topological constraints. Generalized geometry offers a natural common…

In this paper we give explicit, handle-by-handle constructions of concave symplectic fillings of all closed, oriented contact 3-manifolds. These constructions combine recent results of Giroux relating contact structures and open book…

In 1989, Y. Eliashberg proved that two overtwisted contact structures on a closed oriented 3-manifold are isotopic if and only if they are homotopic as 2-plane fields. We provide an alternative proof of this theorem using the convex surface…

We investigate the geometry of holomorphic curves and complex surfaces from the perspective of singularity theory. We show that, with a suitable choice of a complex bilinear symmetric form, the families of functions and mappings that…

We prove that contact homeomorphisms preserve characteristic foliations on surfaces in contact $3$-manifolds. More precisely, since the characteristic foliation is a singular $1$-dimensional foliation, we show that singular points are…

We obtain a sub-Riemannian version of the classical Gauss-Bonnet theorem. We consider subsurfaces of a three dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifolds, and using a family of taming Riemannian metric, we obtain a pure sub-Riemannian…

We introduce a simple combinatorial way, which we call a rectangular diagram of a surface, to represent a surface in the three-sphere. It has a particularly nice relation to the standard contact structure on $\mathbb S^3$ and to rectangular…

A topology is defined on the mapping class group of a compact connected orientable surface. It is shown that a notion of "genericity" on subsets of the mapping class group arises from this definition. Many plausible results follow from this…

The goal of this article is to survey recent developments in the theory of contact structures in dimension three.

Let M be a closed oriented 3-manifold such that S^1 x M admits a symplectic structure w. The goal of this paper is to show that M is a fiber bundle over S^1. The basic idea is to use the obvious S^1-action on S^1 x M by rotating the first…

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…

In this article we conjecture a 4-dimensional characterization of tightness: a contact structure is tight if and only if a slice-Bennequin inequality holds for smoothly embedded surfaces in Yx[0,1]. An affirmative answer to our conjecture…

In recent times a great amount of progress has been achieved in symplectic and contact geometry, leading to the development of powerful invariants of 3-manifolds such as Heegaard Floer homology and embedded contact homology. These…

According to Giroux, contact manifolds can be described as open books whose pages are Stein manifolds. For 5-dimensional contact manifolds the pages are Stein surfaces, which permit a description via Kirby diagrams. We introduce handle…

In this article we discuss classical theorems from Convex Geometry in the context of topological drawings and beyond. In a simple topological drawing of the complete graph $K_n$, any two edges share at most one point: either a common vertex…

We classify tight contact structures with zero Giroux torsion on some Seifert-fibered manifolds with four exceptional fibers. We get the lower bound by constructing contact structures using Legendrian surgery. We use convex surface theory…

Recently, Honda, Kazez and Matic described an adapted partial open book of a compact contact 3-manifold with convex boundary by generalizing the work of Giroux in the closed case. They also implicitly established a one-to-one correspondence…

In this note we study the contact geometry of symplectic divisors. We show the contact structure induced on the boundary of a divisor neighborhood is invariant under toric and interior blow-ups and blow-downs. We also construct an open book…