Related papers: Stein-fillability and positivity in the mapping cl…
The aim of this paper is to use mapping class group relations to approach the `geography' problem for Stein fillings of a contact 3-manifold. In particular, we adapt a formula of Endo and Nagami so as to calculate the signature of such…
We construct an infinite family of genus one open book decompositions supporting Stein-fillable contact structures and show that their monodromies do not admit positive factorisations. This extends a line of counterexamples in higher genera…
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…
In this paper we discuss the change in contact structures as their supporting open book decompositions have their binding components cabled. To facilitate this and applications we define the notion of a rational open book decomposition that…
We study fillings of contact structures supported by planar open books by analyzing positive factorizations of their monodromy. Our method is based on Wendl's theorem on symplectic fillings of planar open books. We prove that every…
We construct a contact 5-manifold supported by infinitely many distinct open books with the identity monodromy and pairwise exotic Stein pages (i.e. pages are pairwise homeomorphic but non-diffeomorphic Stein fillings of a fixed contact…
A two-dimensional open book (S,h) determines a closed, oriented three-manifold Y(S,h) and a contact structure C(S,h) on Y(S,h). The contact structure C(S,h) is Stein fillable if h is positive, i.e. h can be written as a product of…
We construct a family of Stein fillable contact homology 3-spheres such that each contact structure of the family is supported by an open book with planar page, and a Stein filling of the contact manifold is of Mazur type.
We prove that Stein surfaces with boundary coincide up to orientation preserving diffeomorphisms with simple branched coverings of $\B^4$ whose branch set is a positive braided surface. As a consequence, we have that a smooth oriented…
Suppose S is a compact surface with boundary, and let g be a diffeomorphism of S which fixes the boundary pointwise. We denote by (M_{S,g},\xi_{S,g})$ the contact 3-manifold compatible with the open book (S,g). In this article, we construct…
We consider a fixed contact 3-manifold that admits infinitely many compact Stein fillings which are all homeomorphic but pairwise non-diffeomorphic. Each of these fillings gives rise to a closed contact 5-manifold described as a contact…
For any infinite-type surface $S$, a natural question is whether the homology of its mapping class group contains any non-trivial classes that are supported on (i) a compact subsurface or (ii) a finite-type subsurface. Our purpose here is…
It is known by A. Loi and R. Piergallini that a closed, oriented, smooth 3-manifold is Stein fillable if and only if it has a positive open book decomposition. In the present paper we will show that for every link L in a Stein fillable…
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…
On small Seifert fibered spaces $M(e_0;r_1,r_2,r_3)$ with $e_0\neq-1,-2,$ all tight contact structures are Stein fillable. This is not the case for $e_0=-1$ or $-2$. However, for negative twisting structures it is expected that they are all…
We show that there are contact 3-manifolds of support genus one which admit infinitely many Stein fillings, but do not admit arbitrarily large ones. These Stein fillings arise from genus-1 allowable Lefschetz fibrations with distinct…
We show that every open book decomposition of a contact 3-manifold can be represented (up to isotopy) by a smooth R-invariant family of pseudoholomorphic curves on its symplectization with respect to a suitable stable Hamiltonian structure.…
In this paper, we study strong symplectic fillability and Stein fillability of some tight contact structures on negative parabolic and negative hyperbolic torus bundles over the circle. For the universally tight contact structure with…
We exhibit an infinite family of tight contact structures with the property that none of the supporting open books minimizes the genus and maximizes the Euler characteristic of the page simultaneously, answering a question of Baldwin and…
In this second paper of a two-part series, we prove that whenever a contact 3-manifold admits a uniform spinal open book decomposition with planar pages, its (weak, strong and/or exact) symplectic and Stein fillings can be classified up to…