Related papers: Classification of tight contact structures on a so…

These notes provide an introduction to Giroux's theory of convex surfaces in contact 3-manifolds and its simplest applications. They put a special emphasis on pictures and discussions of explicit examples. The first goal is to explain why…

We propose in this paper a method for studying contact structures in 3-manifolds by means of branched surfaces. We explain what it means for a contact structure to be carried by a branched surface embedded in a 3-manifold. To make the…

In 1989, Y. Eliashberg proved that two overtwisted contact structures on a closed oriented 3-manifold are isotopic if and only if they are homotopic as 2-plane fields. We provide an alternative proof of this theorem using the convex surface…

We consider the problem of realizing tight contact structures on closed orientable three-manifolds. By applying the theorems of Hofer et al., one may deduce tightness from dynamical properties of (Reeb) flows transverse to the contact…

A quasitoric manifold is a smooth manifold with a locally standard torus action for which the orbit space is identified with a simple polytope. For a class of topological spaces, the class is called strongly cohomologically rigid if any…

There are many fundamental algorithmic problems on triangulated 3-manifolds whose complexities are unknown. Here we study the problem of finding a taut angle structure on a 3-manifold triangulation, whose existence has implications for both…

Let $\xi$ be a $\tau$-invariant contact structure on $N(W) = \mathbb{R}_{\tau} \times W$ for a closed, $2n$-dimensional manifold $W$, so that each $\{\tau\} \times W$ is a convex hypersurface. When $n=1$, Giroux's criterion provides a…

We construct a simple topological invariant of certain 3-manifolds, including quotients of the 3-sphere by finite groups, based on the fact that the tangent bundle of an orientable 3-manifold is trivialisable. This invariant is strong…

We give definitions of cohomology determinants for compact, connected, orientable 3-manifolds. We also give formulae relating cohomology determinants before and after gluing a solid torus along a torus boundary component. Cohomology…

A contact manifold is a manifold equipped with a distribution of codimension one that satisfies a `maximal non-integrability' condition. A standard example of a contact structure is a strictly pseudoconvex CR manifold, and operators of…

We study torus bundles with affine structure groups. First, we establish a rigidity result under constraints on the first Betti numbers: If $ \text{b}_{1}(M)-\text{b}_{1}(N)=\dim M-\dim N $ holds for a torus bundle $M$ with an affine…

For any homotopy class h in any compact orientable 3-manifold M which is closed or has exclusively torus boundary components, we produce infinitely many pairs of distinct knots representing h with orientation-preserving homeomorphic…

We classify up to isotopy the tight contact structures on small Seifert spaces with $e_0\neq0,-1,-2$. (The first version contains on the $e_0<-2$ case.)

Those maps of a closed surface to the three-dimensional torus that are homotopic to embeddings are characterized. Particular attention is paid to the somewhat intricate case when the surface is nonorientable.

If a closed 3-manifold M supports a closed, nonsingular, irrational 1-form which linearly deforms into contact forms, then M supports a K-contact form. On the 3-torus, a closed nonsingular 1-form deforms linearly into contact forms if and…

We investigate properties of sparse and tight surface graphs. In particular we derive topological inductive constructions for $(2, 2)$-tight surface graphs in the case of the sphere, the plane, the twice punctured sphere and the torus. In…

An upper bound is obtained on the rank of a torus which can act smoothly and effectively on a smooth, closed, simply connected, rationally elliptic manifold. In the maximal-rank case, the manifolds admitting such actions are classified up…

The real torus manifolds are a generalization of small covers, and the Dold manifolds of real torus type are a class of non-trivial fibre bundles over the projective product spaces with real torus manifolds as fibres. In this paper, first,…

Given a contact structure on a manifold $V$ together with a supporting open book decomposition, Bourgeois gave an explicit construction for a contact structure on $V \times \mathbb{T}^2$. We prove that all such structures are universally…

We compute the Ozsv\'ath--Szab\'o contact invariants for all tight contact structures on the manifolds -\Sigma(2,3,6n-1).