Related papers: Tight contact structures on some plumbed 3-manifol…
We propose the study of some kind of monopole equations directly associated with a contact structure. Through a rudimentary analysis about the solutions, we show that a closed contact 3-manifold with positive Tanaka-Webster curvature and…
We prove that every closed, connected contact 3-manifold can be obtained from the 3-sphere with its standard contact structure by contact surgery of coefficient plus or minus 1 along a Legendrian link. As a corollary, we derive a result of…
We generalize the notion of tight geodesics in the curve complex to tight trees. We then use tight trees to construct model geometries for certain surface bundles over graphs. This extends some aspects of the combinatorial model for doubly…
Some properties of non-orientable 3-manifolds are shown. The semi-group of cobordism of immersions of surfaces in such manifolds is computed and proven actually to be a group. Explicit invariants are provided.
About a decade ago Thurston proved that a vast collection of 3-manifolds carry metrics of constant negative curvature. These manifolds are thus elements of {\em hyperbolic geometry}, as natural as Euclid's regular polyhedra. For a closed…
This article analyzes the interplay between symplectic geometry in dimension four and the invariants for smooth four-manifolds constructed using holomorphic triangles introduced in math.SG/0110169. Specifically, we establish a non-vanishing…
We construct a rational homotopy-theoretic model for a classifying space of locally conformally symplectic structures on four-manifolds, and use it to definition a cobordism category of three-manifolds `anchored' by principal $\Omega^2 S^2$…
In this paper we study cobordism categories consisting of manifolds which are endowed with geometric structure. Examples of such geometric structures include symplectic structures, flat connections on principal bundles, and complex…
According to Lerman, compact connected toric contact 3-manifolds with a non-free toric action whose moment cone spans an angle greater than $\pi$ are overtwisted, thus non-fillable. In contrast, we show that all compact connected toric…
We present a classification theorem for closed smooth spin 2-connected 7-manifolds M. This builds on the almost-smooth classification from the first author's thesis. The main additional ingredient is an extension of the Eells-Kuiper…
We introduce a notion of symmetric Whitney tower cobordism between bordered 3-manifolds, aiming at the study of homology cobordism and link concordance. It is motivated by the symmetric Whitney tower approach to slicing knots and links…
We derive new existence results for tight contact structures on certain 3-manifolds which can be presented as surgery along specific knots in S^3. Indeed, we extend our earlier results on knots with maximal Thurston-Bennequin number being…
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…
We demonstrate that the functorial properties of the symplectic field theory under strong cobordisms and surgery cobordisms can produce finite algebraic (planar) torsions from simple examples, which gives a unified treatment of most of the…
Any action of a group $\Gamma$ on $\mathbb H^3$ by isometries yields a class in degree three bounded cohomology by pulling back the volume cocycle to $\Gamma$. We prove that the bounded cohomology of finitely generated Kleinian groups…
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…
This is a problem list in the theory of foliations and laminations of 3-manifolds. The focus is on the relationship of foliations and laminations with other aspects of 3-manifold topology, especially with the Thurston theory of geometric…
In this article we address the existence of positive loops of contactomorphisms in overtwisted contact 3-folds. We present a construction of such positive loops in the contact fibered connected sum of certain contact 3-folds along…
We define an invariant of contact 3-manifolds with convex boundary using Kronheimer and Mrowka's sutured instanton Floer homology theory. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first invariant of contact manifolds -- with or without…
Round handles are affiliated with smooth 4-manifolds in two major ways: 5-dimensional round handles appear extensively as the building blocks in cobordisms between 4-manifolds, whereas 4-dimensional round handles are the building blocks of…