Related papers: Strongly fillable contact 3-manifolds without Stei…
We classify fillable contact structures on all negative-definite star-shaped plumbings. Along the way, we show that such Seifert fibred spaces admit a unique negative maximal twisting number, and compute it explicitly using the Alexander…
We use Heegaard splittings to give some examples of virtually Haken 3-manifolds.
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…
We disprove the generalized Chern-Hamilton conjecture on the existence of critical compatible metrics on contact $3$-manifolds. More precisely, we show that a contact $3$-manifold $(M,\alpha)$ admits a critical compatible metric for the…
In this paper, we complete the classification of which compact 3-manifolds have a virtually compact special fundamental group by addressing the case of mixed 3-manifolds. A compact aspherical 3-manifold is mixed if has at least one JSJ…
We determine topological properties of Stein domains with boundary diffeomorphic to T^3, S^1\times S^2 and some Seifert fibered 3-manifolds.
We show that there exist infinitely many closed 3-manifolds that do not embed in closed symplectic 4-manifolds, disproving a conjecture of Etnyre-Min-Mukherjee. To do this, we construct L-spaces that cannot bound positive or negative…
We describe a necessary and sufficient condition for a principal circle bundle over an even-dimensional manifold to carry an invariant contact structure. As a corollary it is shown that all circle bundles over a given base manifold carry an…
The aim of this paper is to address the following question: given a contact manifold $(\Sigma, \xi)$, what can be said about the aspherical symplectic manifolds $(W, \omega)$ bounded by $(\Sigma, \xi)$ ? We first extend a theorem of…
In this paper we find the first infinite family of hyperbolic 3-manifolds which admit tight contact structures but do not have any tight projectively Anosov flow. These manifolds are obtained as rational surgeries on the figure eight knot.
We prove that the contact structures on Y= dX induced by non-homotopic Stein structures on the 4-manifold X have distinct Heegaard Floer invariants.
We survey the interactions between foliations and contact structures in dimension three, with an emphasis on sutured manifolds and invariants of sutured contact manifolds. This paper contains two original results: the fact that a closed…
The topology of Stein surfaces and contact 3-manifolds is studied by means of handle decompositions. A simple characterization of homeomorphism types of Stein surfaces is obtained --- they correspond to open handlebodies with all handles of…
We prove, by an ad hoc method, that exact fillings with vanishing rational first Chern class of flexibly fillable contact manifolds have unique integral intersection forms. We appeal to the special Reeb dynamics (stronger than ADC \`a la…
Seiberg-Witten (Floer) theory, Ozsvath-Szabo's Heegaard Floer theory, Hutchings's embedded contact homology, in different stages of development, define (or are expected to define) packages of invariants for 3- and 4-manifolds (including…
We use contact handle decompositions and a stabilization process to compute the cylindrical contact homology of a subcritical Stein-fillable contact manifold with vanishing first Chern class, and show that it is completely determined by the…
We characterize the oriented Seifert-fibered three-manifolds which admit positive, transverse contact structures.
We introduce a Floer homotopy version of the contact invariant introduced by Kronheimer-Mrowka-Ozv\'ath-Szab\'o. Moreover, we prove a gluing formula relating our invariant with the first author's Bauer-Furuta type invariant, which refines…
We prove contact big fiber theorems, analogous to the symplectic big fiber theorem by Entov and Polterovich, using symplectic cohomology with support. Unlike in the symplectic case, the validity of the statements requires conditions on the…
It is known that the only Stein filling of the standard contact structure on S^3 is B^4. In this paper, we construct simply connected exotic compact Stein 4-manifold pairs for any Betti number $b_2 \geq 1$; we do this by enlarging corks and…