Related papers: Contact 3-manifolds, holomorphic curves and inters…
We study the intersection theory of punctured pseudoholomorphic curves in $4$-dimensional symplectic cobordisms. We first study the local intersection properties of such curves at the punctures. We then use this to develop topological…
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…
This is the preliminary manuscript of a book on symplectic field theory based on a lecture course for PhD students given in 2015-16. It covers the essentials of the analytical theory of punctured pseudoholomorphic curves, taking the…
We construct infinitely many non-diffeomorphic examples of $5$-dimensional contact manifolds which are tight, admit no strong fillings, and do not have Giroux torsion. We obtain obstruction results for symplectic cobordisms, for which we…
This is a survey of contact homology and its applications to the study of contact manifolds. It is a small tribute to Yasha Eliashberg's huge generosity with his countless explanations of his deep mathematical insights all along his career.…
These notes are an expanded version of an introductory lecture on contact geometry given at the 2001 Georgia Topology Conference. They are intended to present some of the "topological" aspects of three dimensional contact geometry.
We prove a compactness theorem for holomorphic curves in 4-dimensional symplectizations that have embedded projections to the underlying 3-manifold. It strengthens the cylindrical case of the SFT compactness theorem by using intersection…
This is a set of expository lecture notes created originally for a graduate course on holomorphic curves taught at ETH Zurich and the Humboldt University Berlin in 2009/2010. The notes are still incomplete, but due to recent requests from…
These notes provide an introduction to Giroux's theory of convex surfaces in contact 3-manifolds and its simplest applications. They put a special emphasis on pictures and discussions of explicit examples. The first goal is to explain why…
These notes are based on a course that took place at the Universit\'e de Nantes in June 2011 during the "Trimester on Contact and Symplectic Topology". We will explain how holomorphic curves can be used to study symplectic fillings of a…
The main purpose of this article is to classify contact structures on some 3-manifolds, namely lens spaces, most torus bundles over a circle, the solid torus, and the thickened torus T^2 x [0,1]. This classification completes earlier work…
Contact structures on 3-manifolds are analyzed by decomposing the manifold along convex surfaces. Background results of Giroux, Eliashberg, Colin, and Honda are discussed with an emphasis on examples. Convex decompositions are then used to…
This is the second in a series of papers. Here we develop here an intersection theory for manifolds equipped with an action of a finite group. As in our previous paper, our approach will be homotopy theoretic, enabling us to circumvent the…
A complex contact threefold is a threefold with a two-dimensional non-integrable holomorphic distribution. A contact curve on a contact threefold is an integrable curve of the distribution. This work was inspired by two papers of Bryant, in…
We give a new approach to intersection theory. Our "cycles" are closed manifolds mapping into compact manifolds and our "intersections" are elements of a homotopy group of a certain Thom space. The results are then applied in various…
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…
These notes give an introduction to embedded contact homology (ECH) of contact three-manifolds, gathering together many basic notions which are scattered across a number of papers. We also discuss the origins of ECH, including various…
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a version of singular homology based on smooth mappings of manifolds with corners. Although variants of such a theory exists in the literature, we felt that certain points were not adequately…
First the title could be also understood as ``3-manifolds related by non-zero degree maps" or "Degrees of maps between 3-manifolds" for some aspects in this survey talk. The topology of surfaces was completely understood at the end of 19th…
The main purpose of this paper is to summarize the basic ingredients, illustrated with examples, of a pseudoholomorphic curve theory for symplectic 4-orbifolds. These are extensions of relevant work of Gromov, McDuff and Taubes on…