Related papers: The geometry of marked contact Engel structures

We study the geometry of Engel structures, which are 2-plane fields on 4-manifolds satisfying a generic condition, that are compatible with other geometric structures. A complex Engel structure is an Engel 2-plane field on a complex surface…

We identify various structures on the configuration space C of a flying saucer, moving in a three-dimensional smooth manifold M. Always C is a five-dimensional contact manifold. If M has a projective structure, then C is its twistor space…

This paper is about geometric and Riemannian properties of Engel structures, i.e. maximally non-integrable $2$-plane fields on $4$-manifolds. Two $1$-forms $\alpha$ and $\beta$ are called Engel defining forms if…

We study low-dimensional problems in topology and geometry via a study of contact and Cauchy-Riemann ($CR$) structures. A contact structure is called spherical if it admits a compatible spherical $CR$ structure. We will talk about spherical…

We study the large scale geometry of mapping class groups MCG(S), using hyperbolicity properties of curve complexes. We show that any self quasi-isometry of MCG(S) (outside a few sporadic cases) is a bounded distance away from a…

Given a vector bundle $A\to M$ we study the geometry of the graded manifolds $T^*[k]A[1]$, including their canonical symplectic structures, compatible Q-structures and Lagrangian Q-submanifolds. We relate these graded objects to classical…

We compute the contact manifold of null geodesics of the family of spacetimes $\{(\mathbb{S}^2\times\mathbb{S}^1, g_\circ-\frac{d^2}{c^2}dt^2)\}_{d,c\in\mathbb{N}^+\text{ coprime}}$, with $g_\circ$ the round metric on $\mathbb{S}^2$ and $t$…

There are two well-known parabolic split $G_2$-geometries in dimension five, $(2,3,5)$-distributions and $G_2$-contact structures. Here we link these two geometries with yet another $G_2$-related contact structure, which lives on a…

A contact manifold $M$ can be defined as a quotient of a symplectic manifold $X$ by a proper, free action of $\R^{>0}$, with the symplectic form homogeneous of degree 2. If $X$ is, in addition, Kaehler, and its metric is also homogeneous of…

We define \emph{$0$-shifted} and \emph{$+1$-shifted contact structures} on differentiable stacks, thus laying the foundations of \emph{shifted Contact Geometry}. As a side result we show that the kernel of a multiplicative $1$-form on a Lie…

Unit tangent bundles $UM$ of semi-Riemannian manifolds $M$ are shown to be examples of dynamical Legendrian contact structures, which were defined in recent work [25] of Sykes-Zelenko to generalize leaf spaces of 2-nondegenerate CR…

In categorified symplectic geometry, one studies the categorified algebraic and geometric structures that naturally arise on manifolds equipped with a closed nondegenerate (n+1)-form. The case relevant to classical string theory is when n=2…

We develop a construction of Engel stuctures on 4-manifolds based on decompositions of manifolds into round handles. This allows us to show that all parallelizable 4-manifolds admit an Engel structure. We also show that, given two Engel…

We study a class of simply connected manifolds in all odd dimensions greater than 3 that exhibit an infinite number of toric contact structures of Reeb type that are inequivalent as contact structures. We compute the cohomology ring of our…

We classify contact manifolds $(M,\mathcal D)$ which are homogeneous under a connected semisimple Lie group $G$, and symmetric in the sense that there exists a contactomorphism of $(M,\mathcal D)$ normalizing $G$, fixing a point $o$ in $M$…

We relate open book decompositions of a 4-manifold M with its Engel structures. Our main result is, given an open book decomposition of M whose binding is a collection of 2-tori and whose monodromy preserves a framing of a page, the…

We propose a novel approach to contact Hamiltonian mechanics which, in contrast to the one dominating in the literature, serves also for non-trivial contact structures. In this approach Hamiltonians are no longer functions on the contact…

A completely nonintegrable $2$-dimensional distribution on a $4$-manifold is called an Engel structure. A $4$-manifold with an Engel structure is called an Engel manifold. The developing map for an Engel manifold is very important tool to…

If $\eta$ is a contact form on a manifold $M$ such that the orbits of the Reeb vector field form a simple foliation $\mathcal{F}$ on $M$, then the presymplectic 2-form $d\eta$ on $M$ induces a symplectic structure $\omega$ on the quotient…

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…