Related papers: Brieskorn manifolds as contact branched covers of …
We give an elementary topological obstruction for a manifold $M$ of dimension $2q{+}1 \geq 7$ to admit a contact open book with flexible Weinstein pages and $c_1(\pi_2(M)) = 0$: if the torsion subgroup of the $q$-th integral homology group…
Let S^3_r(K) be the oriented 3--manifold obtained by rational r-surgery on a knot K in S^3. Using the contact Ozsvath-Szabo invariants we prove, for a class of knots K containing all the algebraic knots, that S^3_r(K) carries positive,…
A map between manifolds which matches up families of complete vector fields is a fiber bundle mapping on each orbit of those vector fields.
We develop a systematic approach to contact and Jacobi structures on graded supermanifolds. In this framework, contact structures are interpreted as symplectic principal GL(1,R)-bundles. Gradings compatible with the GL(1,R)-action lead to…
We lay the foundations of convex hypersurface theory in contact topology, extending the work of Giroux in dimension three. Specifically, we prove that any closed hypersurface in a contact manifold can be $C^0$-approximated by a convex one.…
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 explore the construction of Legendrian spheres in contact manifolds of any dimension. Two constructions involving open books work in any contact manifold, while one introduced by Ekholm works only in $\mathbb{R}^{2n+1}$. We show that…
It was proven in the first author's paper "Contact 3-manifolds twenty years since J. Martinet's work" (Ann. Inst. Fourier, 42(1992), 165--192) that any tight contact structure on the 3-sphere is diffeomorphic to the standard one. It was…
The image of the branch set of a PL branched cover between PL $n$-manifolds is a simplicial $(n-2)$-complex. We demonstrate that the reverse implication also holds: an open and discrete map $f \colon \mathbb{S}^n \to \mathbb{S}^n$ with the…
As an application of the construction of open books on plumbed 3-manifolds, we construct elliptic open books on torus bundles over the circle. In certain cases these open books are compatible with Stein fillable contact structures and have…
Techniques for constructing codimension 2 embeddings and immersions of the 2 and 3-fold branched covers of the 3 and 4-dimensional spheres are presented. These covers are in braided form, and it is in this sense that they are folded. More…
In this article we conjecture a 4-dimensional characterization of tightness: a contact structure is tight if and only if a slice-Bennequin inequality holds for smoothly embedded surfaces in Yx[0,1]. An affirmative answer to our conjecture…
For Reeb vector fields on closed 3-manifolds, cylindrical contact homology is used to show that the existence of a set of closed Reeb orbit with certain knotting/linking properties implies the existence of other Reeb orbits with other…
We prove, for a class of contact manifolds, that the universal cover of the group of contact diffeomorphisms carries a natural partial order. It leads to a new viewpoint on geometry and dynamics of contactomorphisms. It gives rise to…
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…
We find a self-linking number formula for a given null-homologous transverse link in a contact manifold that is compatible with either an annulus or a pair of pants open book decomposition. It extends Bennequin's self-linking formula for a…
We define branched bending deformations as deformations supported on a piecewise totally geodesic complex of $(n-1)$-dimensional faces meeting along $(n-2)$-dimensional branching loci. These are a generalization of bending deformations, as…
Given any smooth fibration of the unit 3-sphere by great circles, we show that the distribution of 2-planes orthogonal to the great circle fibres is a tight contact structure, a fact well known in the special case of the Hopf fibrations.…
A regular contact manifold is a manifold $M$ equipped with a globally defined contact form $\eta$ such that the topological space $M/\mathcal{R}$ of orbits (trajectories) of the Reeb vector field $\mathcal{R}$ of $\eta$ carries a smooth…
We study compatible contact structures of fibered, positively-twisted graph multilinks in the 3-sphere and prove that the contact structure of such a multilink is tight if and only if the orientations of its link components are all…