Related papers: Four-dimensional symplectic cobordisms containing …

We give a generalization of the concept of near-symplectic structures to 2n dimensions. According to our definition, a closed 2-form \omega on a 2n-manifold M is near-symplectic, if it is symplectic outside a submanifold Z of codimension 3,…

A key tool in our earlier work on ends of manifolds high-dimensional manifolds was an ability to embed cobordisms provided by the Quillen Plus Construction into those ends. Here we develop a `spherical modification' trick which provides a…

It is not known whether the realisation part of the $s$-cobordism theorem holds for smooth 4-manifolds, nor whether every pair of smoothly $h$-cobordant 4-manifolds is also smoothly $s$-cobordant. We provide some new conditions under which…

We construct examples in any odd dimension of contact manifolds with finite and non-zero algebraic torsion (in the sense of Latschev-Wendl), which are therefore tight and do not admit strong symplectic fillings. We prove that Giroux torsion…

In this paper we give an explicit construction of a symplectic Lefschetz fibration whose total space is a smooth compact four dimensional manifold with a prescribed fundamental group. We also study the numerical properties of the sections…

Let $X$ denote the `conifold smoothing', the symplectic Weinstein manifold which is the complement of a smooth conic in $T^*S^3$, or equivalently the plumbing of two copies of $T^*S^3$ along a Hopf link. Let $Y$ denote the `conifold…

In the first part of this paper, we construct infinitely many hyperbolic closed 3-manifolds which admit no symplectic fillable contact structure. All these 3-manifolds are obtained by Dehn surgeries along L-space knots or L-space…

We study the interactions between toric manifolds and Weinstein handlebodies. We define a partially-centered condition on a Delzant polytope, which we prove ensures that the complement of a corresponding partial smoothing of the toric…

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 describe a contact analog of the symplectic cut construction. As an application we show that the group of contactomorphisms for a particular overtwisted contact structure on the three sphere contains countably many nonconjugate two tori.

A study of certain symplectic $4$-orbifolds with vanishing canonical class is initiated. We show that for any such symplectic $4$-orbifold $X$, there is a canonically constructed symplectic $4$-orbifold $Y$, together with a cyclic orbifold…

We introduce the concept of pseudo-trisections of smooth oriented compact 4-manifolds with boundary. The main feature of pseudo-trisections is that they have lower complexity than relative trisections for given 4-manifolds. We prove…

Helmut Hofer introduced in '93 a novel technique based on holomorphic curves to prove the Weinstein conjecture. Among the cases where these methods apply are all contact 3--manifolds $(M,\xi)$ with $\pi_2(M) \ne 0$. We modify Hofer's…

Let $M_0$ be a compact and orientable 3-manifold. After capping off spherical boundaries with balls and removing any torus boundaries, we prove that the resulting manifold $M$ contains handlebodies of arbitrary genus such that the closure…

In this article we use the technique of Luttinger surgery to produce small examples of simply connected and non-simply connected minimal symplectic 4-manifolds. In particular, we construct: (1) An example of a minimal symplectic 4-manifold…

It is well known that an arbitrary closed orientable $3$-manifold can be realized as the unique boundary of a compact orientable $4$-manifold, that is, any closed orientable $3$-manifold is cobordant to zero. In this paper, we consider the…

We prove a contact non-squeezing phenomenon on homotopy spheres that are fillable by Liouville domains with infinite dimensional symplectic homology: there exists a smoothly embedded ball in such a sphere that cannot be made arbitrarily…

Harer, Kas and Kirby have conjectured that every handle decomposition of the elliptic surface $E(1)_{2,3}$ requires both 1- and 3-handles. In this article, we construct a smooth 4-manifold which has the same Seiberg-Witten invariant as…

We show that any 4-manifold, after surgery on a curve, admits an achiral Lefschetz fibration. In particular, we show that the connected sum of any simply connected 4-manifold with a 2-sphere bundle over the 2-sphere will admit an achiral…

By a special symplectic connection we mean a torsion free connection which is either the Levi-Civita connection of a Bochner-K\"ahler metric of arbitrary signature, a Bochner-bi-Lagrangian connection, a connection of Ricci type or a…