Related papers: Chern-Weil theory and the group of strict contacto…

We prove that the group of strict contactomorphisms of the standard tight contact structure on the three-sphere deformation retracts to its unitary subgroup U(2).

We exhibit the first examples of exotic contactomorphisms with infinite order as elements of the contact mapping class group. These are given by certain Dehn twists on the separating sphere in a connected sum of two closed contact…

Let $M$ be a smooth manifold. We use Chern-Weil theory to study the characteristic classes of principal $G$-bundles built from continuous families of $\pi_{1}(M)$-representations, where $G$ is a compact Lie group. We then relate these…

We compute the homotopy type of the space of embeddings of convex disks with Legendrian boundary into a tight contact $3$-manifold, whenever the sum of the absolute value of the rotation number of the boundary with the Thurston-Bennequin…

We study exact orbifold fillings of contact manifolds using Floer theories. Motivated by Chen-Ruan's orbifold Gromov-Witten invariants, we define symplectic cohomology of an exact orbifold filling as a group using classical techniques, i.e.…

In this work, we prove that every complex contact structure gives rise to a distinguished type of almost contact metric 3-structure. As an application of our main result, we provide several new examples of manifolds which admit taut contact…

We prove the non--triviality of the Reeb flow for the (2n+1)--dimensional standard contact spheres inside the fundamental group of their contactomorphism group, n greater than 3. The argument uses the existence of homotopically non--trivial…

We show the existence of elements of infinite order in some homotopy groups of the contactomorphism group of overtwisted spheres. It follows in particular that the contactomorphism group of some high dimensional overtwisted spheres is not…

We calculate the weak homotopy type of the group of contactomorphisms of the three-sphere which coincide with the identity on (a neighborhood of) an overtwisted disk.

We show that for all $n \ge 3$, any $(2n+1)$-dimensional manifold that admits a tight contact structure, also admits a tight but non-fillable contact structure, in the same almost contact class. For $n=2$, we obtain the same result,…

We classify the normal CR structures on $S^3$ and their automorphism groups. Together with [3], this closes the classification of normal CR structures on contact 3-manifolds. We give a criterion to compare 2 normal CR structures, and we…

We introduce the notion of asymptotically finitely generated contact structures, which states essentially that the Symplectic Homology in a certain degree of any filling of such contact manifolds is uniformly generated by only finitely many…

We produce a large class of hyperbolic homology 3-spheres admitting arbitrarily many distinct tight contact structures. We also produce a sub-class admitting arbitrarily many distinct tight contact structures within the same homotopy class…

We build homogeneous quasi-morphisms on the universal cover of the contactomorphism group for certain prequantizations of monotone symplectic toric manifolds. This is done using Givental's nonlinear Maslov index and a contact reduction…

We introduce the classes of holomorphic $p$-contact manifolds and holomorphic $s$-symplectic manifolds that generalise the classical holomorphic contact and holomorphic symplectic structures. After observing their basic properties and…

For a closed connected manifold N, we establish the existence of geometric structures on various subgroups of the contactomorphism group of the standard contact jet space J^1N, as well as on the group of contactomorphisms of the standard…

This paper provides a topological method for filling contact structures on the connected sums of $S^2\times S^3$. Examples of nonsymplectomorphic strong fillings of homotopy equivalent contact structures with vanishing first Chern class on…

We present a sketch of the proof of the following theorems: (1) Every 3-manifold has only finitely many homotopy classes of 2-plane fields which carry tight contact structures. (2) Every closed atoroidal 3-manifold carries finitely many…

We prove that every non-degenerate Reeb flow on a closed contact manifold $M$ admitting a strong symplectic filling $W$ with vanishing first Chern class carries at least two geometrically distinct closed orbits provided that the positive…

Motivated by some previously known facts from mathematical and physics literature, we explore certain relations between 3-dimensional topological gauge theories with continuous and finite gauge groups, commonly known as Chern-Simons (CS)…