Related papers: Thurston norm and Euler classes of tight contact s…
It is a basic question in contact geometry to classify all non-isotopic tight contact structures on a given 3-manifold. If the manifold has a boundary, we need also specify the dividing set on the boundary. In this paper, we answer the…
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…
We determine the closed, oriented Seifert fibered 3-manifolds which carry positive tight contact structures. Our main tool is a new non-vanishing criterion for the contact Ozsvath-Szabo invariant.
We consider contact foliations: objects which generalise to higher dimensions the flow of the Reeb vector field on contact manifolds. We list a number of properties of such foliations, and propose two conjectures about the topological types…
We study positive braid knots (the knots in the three-sphere realized as positive braid closures) through the lens of the L-space conjecture. This conjecture predicts that if $K$ is a non-trivial positive braid knot, then for all $r <…
We investigate a conjecture due to Haefliger and Thurston in the context of foliated manifold bundles. In this context, Haefliger-Thurston's conjecture predicts that every $M$-bundle over a manifold $B$ where $\text{dim}(B)\leq…
We use convex decomposition theory to (1) reprove the existence of a universally tight contact structure on every irreducible 3-manifold with nonempty boundary, and (2) prove that every toroidal 3-manifold carries infinitely many…
We study weak versus strong symplectic fillability of some tight contact structures on torus bundles over the circle. In particular, we prove that almost all of these tight contact structures are weakly, but not strongly symplectically…
We prove that a version of the Thurston-Bennequin inequality holds for Legendrian and transverse links in a rational homology contact 3-sphere $(M,\xi)$, whenever $\xi$ is tight. More specifically, we show that the self-linking number of a…
Novikov's theorem is a rigidity result on the class of taut foliations on three-manifolds. For higher dimensional manifolds, foliations with a strong symplectic form have been suggested as the class of foliations having similar rigidity…
For any orientable finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifold, this paper proves that the profinite isomorphism type of the fundamental group uniquely determines the isomorphism type of the first integral cohomology, as marked with the Thurston…
Using the virtual fibering theorem of Agol we show that a sutured 3-manifold $(M, R_+,R_-,\gamma)$ is taut if and only if the $\ell^2$-Betti numbers of the pair $(M,R_-)$ are zero. As an application we can characterize Thurston norm…
This paper shows that there is a mapping class group-equivariant deformation retraction of the Teichm\"uller space of a closed, orientable surface onto a cell complex of dimension equal to the virtual cohomological dimension of the mapping…
This paper begins the study of relations between Riemannian geometry and global properties of contact structures on 3-manifolds. In particular we prove an analog of the sphere theorem from Riemannian geometry in the setting of contact…
This is the less official, English version of the proof of the fact that every closed atoroidal 3-manifold carries finitely many isotopy classes of tight contact structures.
A systematic framework for realizing $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge extensions of hyperbolic lattices within the nearest-neighbor tight-binding formalism is developed. Using the triangle group $\Delta(2,8,8)$ as an example, we classify all…
Given a fibred hyperbolic 3-manifold with boundary, we coarsely relate the Euclidean geometry of its cusps to the classical fractional Dehn twist coefficient of its monodromy. This result fits into the broader programme of coarsely…
In an earlier paper (math.SG/0101206), we introduced Floer homology theories associated to closed, oriented three-manifolds Y and SpinC structures. In the present paper, we give calculations and study the properties of these invariants. The…
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…
In this note we observe, answering a question of Eliashberg and Thurston, that all contact structures on a closed oriented 3-manifold are $C^\infty$-deformations of foliations.