Related papers: Unexpected Stein fillings, rational surface singul…

We study Milnor fibers and symplectic fillings of links of sandwiched singularities, with the goal of contrasting their algebro-geometric deformation theory and symplectic topology. In the algebro-geometric setting, smoothings of sandwiched…

The sandwiched surface singularities are those rational surface singularities which dominate birationally smooth surface singularities. de Jong and van Straten showed that one can reduce the study of the deformations of a sandwiched surface…

Given a link of a normal surface singularity with its canonical contact structure, we compare the collection of its Stein fillings to its Milnor fillings (that is, Milnor fibers of possible smoothings). We prove that, unlike Stein fillings,…

We show that isolated surface singularities which are non-normal may have Milnor fibers which are non-diffeomorphic to those of their normalizations. Therefore, non-normal isolated singularities enrich the collection of Stein fillings of…

The oriented link of the cyclic quotient singularity $\mathcal{X}_{p,q}$ is orientation-preserving diffeomorphic to the lens space $L(p,q)$ and carries the standard contact structure $\xi_{st}$. Lisca classified the Stein fillings of…

We consider the canonical contact structures on links of rational surface singularities with reduced fundamental cycle. These singularities can be characterized by their dual resolution graphs: the graph is a tree, and the weight of each…

We determine a one-to-one correspondence between Milnor fibers and minimal symplectic fillings of a quotient surface singularity (up to diffeomorphism type) by giving an explicit algorithm to compare them mainly via techniques from the…

We prove that if a contact 3-manifold admits an open book decomposition of genus 0, a certain intersection pattern cannot appear in the homology of any of its minimal symplectic fillings, and moreover, fillings cannot contain symplectic…

We find all $P$-resolutions of quotient surface singularities (especially, tetrahedral, octahedral, and icosahedral singularities) together with their dual graphs, which reproduces Jan Steven's list [Manuscripta Math. 1993] of the numbers…

We investigate the correspondence between three theories of deformations of rational surface singularities: de Jong and van Straten's picture deformations, Koll\'ar's P-resolutions, and Pinkham's smoothings of negative weights. We provide…

Generic relative immersions of compact one-manifolds in the closed unit disk, i.e. divides, provide a powerful combinatorial framework, and allow a topological construction of fibered classical links, for which the monodromy diffeomorphism…

For any finitely presentable group $G$, we show the existence of an isolated complex surface singularity link which admits infinitely many exotic Stein fillings such that the fundamental group of each filling is isomorphic to $G$. We also…

Fibered multilinks are a generalization of classical fibered knots and open books that arise in the study of surface singularities and Milnor fibrations. We prove that if the canonical contact structure on the link of a surface singularity…

In a recent paper of Akhmedov, Etnyre, Mark and Smith, it was shown that there exist infinitely many contact Seifert fibered 3-manifolds each of which admits infinitely many exotic (homeomorphic but pairwise non-diffeomorphic)…

Let f be an isolated plane curve singularity with Milnor fiber of genus at least 5. For all such f, we give (a) an intrinsic description of the geometric monodromy group that does not invoke the notion of the versal deformation space, and…

The rational blowdown operation in 4-manifold topology replaces a neighborhood of a configuration of spheres by a rational homology ball. Such configurations typically arise from resolutions of surface singularities that admit rational…

We study the monodromy diffeomorphism of Milnor fibrations of isolated complex surface singularities, by computing the family Seiberg--Witten invariant of Seifert-fibered Dehn twists using recent advances in monopole Floer homology. More…

While the topological types of {normal} surface singularities with homology sphere link have been classified, forming a rich class, until recently little was known about the possible analytic structures. We proved in [Geom. Topol. 9(2005)…

Symplectic fillings of standard tight contact structures on lens spaces are understood and classified. The situation is different if one considers non-standard tight structures (i.e. those that are virtually overtwisted), for which a…

A simple characterization is given of open subsets of a complex surface that smoothly perturb to Stein open subsets. As applications, complex 2-space C^2 contains domains of holomorphy (Stein open subsets) that are exotic R^4's, and others…