Related papers: Notes On Open Book Decompositions For Engel Struct…

We describe a necessary and sufficient condition for a principal circle bundle over an even-dimensional manifold to carry an invariant contact structure. As a corollary it is shown that all circle bundles over a given base manifold carry an…

In this paper we study the topology of the cobordism category of open and closed strings. This is a 2-category in which the objects are compact one-manifolds whose boundary components are labeled by an indexing set (the set of "D-branes"),…

We show that in every even dimension there are closed manifolds that are doubles, but have no open book decomposition. In high dimensions, this contradicts the conclusions in Ranicki's book on high-dimensional knot theory. In all…

Deformations of topological open string theories are described, with an emphasis on their algebraic structure. They are encoded in the mixed bulk-boundary correlators. They constitute the Hochschild complex of the open string algebra -- the…

It is known that the moduli space of Einstein structures in four dimensions is generally considered to be rigid so that Einstein metrics tend to be isolated modulo diffeomorphisms under infinitesimal Einstein deformations. We examine the…

We show that, under a certain condition, contact 5-manifolds can `coarsely' distinguish smooth structures on compact Stein 4-manifolds via contact open books. We also give a simple sufficient condition for an infinite family of Stein…

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…

We consider links that are alternating on surfaces embedded in a compact 3-manifold. We show that under mild restrictions, the complement of the link decomposes into simpler pieces, generalising the polyhedral decomposition of alternating…

This paper contains a purely topological theorem and a geometric application. The topological theorem states that if M is a simple closed orientable 3-manifold such that \pi_1(M) contains a genus g surface group and H_1(M;Z/2Z) has rank at…

We consider complements of standard Seifert surfaces of special alternating links. On these handlebodies, we use Honda's method to enumerate those tight contact structures whose dividing sets are isotopic to the link, and find their number…

We obtain new invariants of topological link concordance and homology cobordism of 3-manifolds from Hirzebruch-type intersection form defects of towers of iterated p-covers. Our invariants can extract geometric information from an arbitrary…

We construct expanding endomorphisms on smooth manifolds that are homeomorphic to tori yet have exotic underlying PL-structures.

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…

For any Engel 4-fold, we show that the scanning map from the space of Engel knots to the space of formal Engel knots is a weak homotopy equivalence when restricted to the complement of the orbits of the Engel kernel. This is a relative,…

A positive contactomorphism of a contact manifold $M$ is the end point of a contact isotopy on $M$ that is always positively transverse to the contact structure. Assume that $M$ contains a Legendrian sphere $\Lambda$, and that $(M,\Lambda)$…

We show that Brieskorn manifolds with their standard contact structures are contact branched coverings of spheres. This covering maps a contact open book decomposition of the Brieskorn manifold onto a Milnor open book of the sphere.

We study threefolds of general type constructed as $\mathbb{Z}_2^s$-covers of weighted projective spaces with a particular focus on their invariants, deformation theory, and the behavior of the $m$-canonical map. For the invariants, we…

We study topological open membranes of BF type in a manifest BV formalism. Our main interest is the effect of the bulk deformations on the algebra of boundary operators. This forms a homotopy Lie algebra, which can be understood in terms of…

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…

We prove that if a contact manifold $(M,\xi)$ is supported by a planar open book, then Euler characteristic and signature of any Stein filling of $(M,\xi)$ is bounded. We also prove a similar finiteness result for contact manifolds…