Related papers: A classification result and contact structures in …
We give a complete proof of Thurston's Orbifold Theorem for very good 3-orbifolds of cyclic type. An orbifold is said to be very good when it has a finite cover which is a manifold. A 3-orbifold is of cyclic type if the singular set is a…
The tight versus overtwisted dichotomy has been an essential organizing principle and driving force in 3-dimensional contact geometry since its inception around 1990. In this article, we will discuss the genesis of this dichotomy in…
In this article, we prove a generalization of a theorem of Lisca-Matic to Stein cobordisms and develop a method for distinguishing certain Stein cobordisms using rotation numbers. Using these results along with standard techniques from…
We present new explicit tight and overtwisted contact structures on the (round) 3-sphere and the (flat) 3-torus for which the ambient metric is weakly compatible. Our proofs are based on the construction of nonvanishing curl eigenfields…
On every compact and orientable three-manifold, we construct total foliations (three codimension 1 foliations that are transverse at every point). This construction can be performed on any homotopy class of plane fields with vanishing Euler…
We use convex decomposition theory to (1) reprove the existence of a universally tight contact structure on every irreducible 3-manifold with nonempty boundary, and (2) prove that every toroidal 3-manifold carries infinitely many…
We study compatible contact structures of fibered Seifert multilinks in homology 3-spheres and especially give a necessary and sufficient condition for the contact structure to be tight in the case where the Seifert fibration is positively…
We study contact structures compatible with genus one open book decompositions with one boundary component. Any monodromy for such an open book can be written as a product of Dehn twists around dual non-separating curves in the…
The purpose of this article is to give a proof of the Orbifold Theorem announced by Thurston in late 1981: If $O$ is a compact, connected, orientable, irreducible and topologically atoroidal 3-orbifold with non-empty ramification locus,…
In this note we make several observations concerning symplectic cobordisms. Among other things we show that every contact 3-manifold has infinitely many concave symplectic fillings and that all overtwisted contact 3-manifolds are…
We classify Legendrian unknots in overtwisted contact structures on $S^3$. In particular, we show that up to contact isotopy for every pair $(n,\pm(n-1))$ with $n>0$ there are exactly two oriented non-loose Legendrian unknots in $S^3$ with…
We classify compact manifolds of dimension three equipped with a path structure and a fixed contact form (which we refer to as a strict path structure) under the hypothesis that their automorphism group is non-compact. We use a Cartan…
In this note, we prove the existence of a closed geodesic of positive length on any compact developable orbifold of dimension 3, 5, or 7. The argument uses the stratification of the singular locus, and reduces the problem of existence of a…
In this paper, we study the global behaviour of contact structures on oriented manifolds V which are circle bundles over a closed orientable surface S of genus g>0. We establish in particular contact analogs of a number of classical results…
In this paper, we give a complete topological, as well as geometrical classification of closed 3-dimensional Lorentz manifolds admitting a noncompact isometry group.
We characterize the oriented Seifert-fibered three-manifolds which admit positive, transverse contact structures.
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…
We study open books on three manifolds which are compatible with an overtwisted contact structure. We show that the existence of certain arcs, called sobering arcs, is a sufficient condition for an open book to be overtwisted, and is…
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…
In this note we observe that one can contact embed all contact 3-manifolds into a Stein fillable contact structure on the twisted $S^3$-bundle over $S^2$ and also into a unique overtwisted contact structure on $S^3\times S^2$. These results…