Related papers: Planar Lefschetz fibrations and Stein structures w…
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…
In this paper we prove a vanishing theorem for the contact Ozsvath--Szabo invariants of certain contact 3--manifolds having positive Giroux torsion. We use this result to establish similar vanishing results for contact structures with…
We characterize L-spaces which are Seifert fibered over the 2-sphere in terms of taut foliations, transverse foliations and transverse contact structures. We give a sufficient condition for certain contact Seifert fibered 3-manifolds with…
An isolated complex surface singularity induces a canonical contact structure on its link. In this paper, we initiate the study of the existence problem of Stein cobordisms between these contact structures depending on the properties of…
It is known that every compact Stein 4-manifolds can be embedded into a simply connected, minimal, closed, symplectic 4-manifold. By using this property, we discuss a new method of constructing corks. This method generates a large class of…
From any 4-dimensional oriented handlebody X without 3- and 4-handles and with b_2>0, we construct arbitrary many compact Stein 4-manifolds which are mutually homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to each other, so that their topological…
Using the knot Floer homology filtration, we define invariants associated to a knot in a three-manifold possessing non-vanishing Floer co(homology) classes. In the case of the Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariant we obtain an invariant of knots…
We utilize the Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariant to detect the action of involutions on certain homology spheres that are surgeries on symmetric links, generalizing a previous result of Akbulut and Durusoy. Potentially this may be useful to…
We use the Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariant to produce examples of strongly symplectically fillable contact 3-manifolds which are not Stein fillable.
We study the invariants of surfaces in 4-manifolds extracted from the Seiberg-Witten and the Ozsvath-Szabo invariants of their fiber sums with auxiliary Lefschetz fibrations. Such invariants involve relative Spin_c structures and can be…
We show that there are vast families of contact 3-manifolds each member of which admits infinitely many Stein fillings with arbitrarily big euler characteristics and arbitrarily small signatures ---which disproves a conjecture of Stipsicz…
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…
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…
In this paper, we show that the Ozsv\'ath-Szab\'o contact invariant $c^+(\xi)\in HF^+(-Y)$ of a contact 3-manifold $(Y,\xi)$ can be calculated combinatorially if $Y$ is the boundary of a certain type of plumbing $X$, and $\xi$ is induced by…
We discuss functoriality properties of the Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariant, and expose a number of results which seemed destined for folklore. We clarify the (in)dependence of the invariant on the basepoint, prove that it is functorial with…
We prove that every strong symplectic filling of a planar contact manifold admits a symplectic Lefschetz fibration over the disk, and every strong filling of the 3-torus similarly admits a Lefschetz fibration over the annulus. It follows…
In this article we present infinitely many 3-manifolds admitting infinitely many universally tight contact structures each with trivial Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariants. By known properties of these invariants the contact structures…
In this article we provide an infinite family of weakly symplectically fillable contact structures with trivial Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariants over Z/2Z. As a consequence of this fact, we show how Heegaard-Floer theory can distinguish…
The Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariant is a complete classification invariant for tight contact structures on small Seifert fibered 3-manifolds which are L-spaces.
We determine the closed, oriented Seifert fibered 3-manifolds which carry positive tight contact structures. Our main tool is a new non-vanishing criterion for the contact Ozsvath-Szabo invariant.