Related papers: Surface singularities and planar contact structure…
We construct four-dimensional symplectic cobordisms between contact three-manifolds generalizing an example of Eliashberg. One key feature is that any handlebody decomposition of one of these cobordisms must involve three-handles. The other…
We show that a minimal surface of general type has a canonical symplectic structure (unique up to symplectomorphism) which is invariant for smooth deformation. We show that the symplectomorphism type is also invariant for deformations which…
We extend the theory of complete minimal surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$ of finite total curvature to the wider class of elliptic special Weingarten surfaces of finite total curvature; in particular, we extend the seminal works of L. Jorge and…
In a paper of Menasco and Reid, it is conjectured that there exist no hyperbolic knots in S^3 for which the complement contains a closed embedded totally geodesic surface. In this note, we show that one can get "as close as possible" to a…
In this paper, we introduce the notions of an iterated planar Lefschetz fibration and an iterated planar open book decomposition and prove the Weinstein conjecture for contact manifolds supporting an open book that has iterated planar…
A maximal surface $\sb$ with isolated singularities in a complete flat Lorentzian 3-manifold $\N$ is said to be entire if it lifts to a (periodic) entire multigraph $\tilde{\sb}$ in $\l^3.$ In addition, $\sb$ is called of finite type if it…
We study the flat geometry of the least degenerate singularity of a singular surface in $\mathbb R^4$, the $I_{1}$ singularity parametrised by $(x,y)\mapsto(x,xy,y^{2},y^{3})$. This singularity appears generically when projecting a regular…
Motivated by the programmes initiated by Taubes and Perutz, we study the geometry of near-symplectic 4-manifolds, i.e., manifolds equipped with a closed 2-form which is symplectic outside a union of embedded 1-dimensional submanifolds, and…
We consider symplectic cohomology twisted by sphere bundles, which can be viewed as an analogue of local systems. Using the associated Gysin exact sequence, we prove the uniqueness of part of the ring structure on cohomology of fillings for…
We consider a fixed contact 3-manifold that admits infinitely many compact Stein fillings which are all homeomorphic but pairwise non-diffeomorphic. Each of these fillings gives rise to a closed contact 5-manifold described as a contact…
Recently L. Nicolaescu and the author formulated a conjecture which relates the geometric genus of a complex analytic normal surface singularity (whose link $M$ is a rational homology sphere) with the Seiberg-Witten invariant of $M$…
In this paper, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of regular ends of flat surfaces in the hyperbolic 3-space H^3. Galvez, Martinez and Milan showed that when the singular set does not accumulate at an end, the end is asymptotic to a…
Let f : X -> S be any elliptic fibration. If X has dimension 3 and is not uniruled, then X has a minimal model (with terminal singularities) [Mori]. In earlier work we have shown that there exists a birationally equivalent elliptic…
A noncompact (oriented) surface satisfies the condition $(\star)$ if their isolated ends are ''accumulated by genus''. We show that every surface satisfying this condition is homeomorfic to the leaf of a minimal codimension one foliation on…
Extending the notion of monodromies associated with open books of $3$-manifolds, we consider monodromies for all incompressible surfaces in $3$-manifolds as partial self-maps of the arc set of the surfaces. We use them to develop a…
By using cobordism theoretic arguments similar to those in the literature on positive scalar curvature metrics we prove the existence of contact structures on 5-dimensional spin manifolds whose fundamental group is a group of odd order (not…
We develop the notions of connections and curvature for general Lie-Rinehart algebras without using smoothness assumptions on the base space. We present situations when a connection exists. E.g., this is the case when the underlying module…
It is known that every closed oriented 3-manifold is homology cobordant to a hyperbolic 3-manifold. By contrast we show that many homology cobordism classes contain no Seifert fibered 3-manifold. This is accomplished by determining the…
In this note we study several aspects of coisotropic submanifolds of a contact manifold. In particular we give a structure theorem for the singularity of the characteristic foliation of a coisotropic submanifold. Moreover we establish the…
We study model geometries of finitely generated groups. If a finitely generated group does not contain a non-trivial finite rank free abelian commensurated subgroup, we show any model geometry is dominated by either a symmetric space of…