Related papers: Explicit concave fillings of contact three-manifol…
We say that a contact manifold is Milnor fillable if it is contactomorphic to the contact boundary of an isolated complex-analytic singularity (X,x). Generalizing results of Milnor and Giroux, we associate to each holomorphic function f…
This paper is the second part of our work on 4-dimensional 2-handlebodies. In the first part (arXiv:math.GT/0407032) it is shown that up to certain set of local moves, connected simple coverings of B^4 branched over ribbon surfaces,…
Emmanuel Giroux showed that every contact structure on a closed three dimensional manifold is supported by an open book decomposition. We will extend this result by showing that the open book decomposition can be chosen in such a way that…
We first study symplectically embedded curves in symplectic surfaces with high self-intersection numbers compared to their genus. We prove in two different ways that such a curve completely determines both the diffeomorphism type of the…
We use contact fiber sums of open book decompositions to define an infinite hierarchy of filling obstructions for contact 3-manifolds, called planar k-torsion for nonnegative integers k, all of which cause the contact invariant in Embedded…
We provide a complete set of two moves that suffice to relate any two open book decompositions of a given 3-manifold. One of the moves is the usual plumbing with a positive or negative Hopf band, while the other one is a special local…
An origami manifold is a manifold equipped with a closed 2-form which is symplectic except on a hypersurface where it is like the pullback of a symplectic form by a folding map and its kernel fibrates with oriented circle fibers over a…
Contact structures on 3-manifolds are analyzed by decomposing the manifold along convex surfaces. Background results of Giroux, Eliashberg, Colin, and Honda are discussed with an emphasis on examples. Convex decompositions are then used to…
We show that any symplectic filling of the standard contact submanifold $(\mathbb{S}^{2n-1},\xi_{\mathrm{std}})$ of $(\mathbb{S}^{2n+1},\xi_{\mathrm{std}})$ in $(\mathbb{D}^{n+1},\omega_{\mathrm{std}})$ is smoothly unknotted if $n\ge 2$. We…
We give a new characterization of symplectic surfaces in CP^2 via bridge trisections. Specifically, a minimal genus surface in CP^2 is smoothly isotopic to a symplectic surface if and only if it is smoothly isotopic to a surface in…
We show that there are vast families of contact 3-manifolds each member of which admits infinitely many Stein fillings with arbitrarily big euler characteristics and arbitrarily small signatures ---which disproves a conjecture of Stipsicz…
Twists of contact structures in dimension 3 and higher are studied in this paper from a viewpoint of contact round surgery. Three kinds of new modifications of contact structures which are higher-dimensional generalizations of the…
We classify tight contact structures on the small Seifert fibered 3--manifold M(-1; r_1, r_2, r_3) with r_i in (0,1) and r_1, r_2 \geq 1/2. The result is obtained by combining convex surface theory with computations of contact…
We give a method to construct singular Lagrangian 3-torus fibrations over certain a priori given integral affine manifolds with singularities, which we call simple. The main result of this article is the proof that the topological…
Let $H\subseteq S^3$ be the two-component Hopf link. After choosing a Legendrian representative of $H$ with respect to the standard tight contact structure on $S^3$ we perform contact $(-1)$-surgery on the link itself. The manifold we get…
We show that for all $n \ge 3$, any $(2n+1)$-dimensional manifold that admits a tight contact structure, also admits a tight but non-fillable contact structure, in the same almost contact class. For $n=2$, we obtain the same result,…
We study symplectic geometry of rationally connected $3$-folds. The first result shows that rationally connectedness is a symplectic deformation invariant in dimension $3$. If a rationally connected $3$-fold $X$ is Fano or $b_2(X)=2$, we…
In this paper we construct and classify Lagrangian T^3-fibrations on non compact symplectic manifolds with singular fibres of prescribed topological type. This contributes to the understanding of the structure of the singular fibres that…
We define a class of symplectic fibrations called symplectic configurations. They are natural generalization of Hamiltonian fibrations. Their geometric and topological properties are investigated. We are mainly concentrated on integral…
We introduce a symplectic surgery in six dimensions which collapses Lagrangian three-spheres and replaces them by symplectic two-spheres. Under mirror symmetry it corresponds to an operation on complex 3-folds studied by Clemens, Friedman…