Related papers: Minimality and symplectic sums

This text is a set of lecture notes for a series of four talks given at I.P.A.M., Los Angeles, on March 18-20, 2003. The first lecture provides a quick overview of symplectic topology and its main tools: symplectic manifolds, almost-complex…

This paper explains an application of Gromov's h-principle to prove the existence, on any orientable 4-manifold, of a folded symplectic form. That is a closed 2-form which is symplectic except on a separating hypersurface where the form…

It is a well known fact that every embedded symplectic surface $\Sigma$ in a symplectic 4-manifold $(X^4,\omega)$ can be made $J$-holomorphic for some almost-complex structure $J$ compatible with $\omega$. In this paper we investigate when…

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…

Polyfold theory, as developed by Hofer, Wysocki, and Zehnder, is a relatively new approach to resolving transversality issues that arise in the study of $J$-holomorphic curves in symplectic geometry. This approach has recently led to a…

In this paper we obtain the following results: (1) Any compact Stein surface with boundary embeds naturally into a symplectic Lefschetz fibration over the 2-sphere. (2) There exists a minimal elliptic fibration over the 2-disk, which is not…

Let X be a finite 2-complex with unfree fundamental group. We prove lower bounds for the area of a metric on X, in terms of the square of the least length of a noncontractible loop in X. We thus establish a uniform systolic inequality for…

For a closed oriented smooth 4-manifold X with $b^2_+(X)>0$, the Seiberg-Witten invariants are well-defined. Taubes' "SW=Gr" theorem asserts that if X carries a symplectic form then these invariants are equal to well-defined counts of…

Two commuting symplectomorphisms of a symplectic manifold give rise to actions on Floer cohomologies of each other. We prove the elliptic relation saying that the supertraces of these two actions are equal. In the case when a…

Let M be a Weinstein four-manifold mirror to Y\D for (Y,D) a log Calabi--Yau surface; intuitively, this is typically the Milnor fibre of a smoothing of a cusp singularity. We introduce two families of symplectomorphisms of M: Lagrangian…

We construct four-dimensional symplectic cobordisms between contact three-manifolds generalizing an example of Eliashberg. One key feature is that any handlebody decomposition of one of these cobordisms must involve three-handles. The other…

The construction of manifold structures and fundamental classes on the (compactified) moduli spaces appearing in Gromov-Witten theory is a long-standing problem. Up until recently, most successful approaches involved the imposition of…

According to Taubes, the Gromov invariants of a symplectic four-manifold X with b_+ > 1 satisfy the duality Gr(A) = +/- Gr(K-A), where K is Poincare dual to the canonical class. Extending joint work with Simon Donaldson in math.SG/0012067,…

This is one in a series of papers devoted to the foundations of Symplectic Field Theory sketched in [Y Eliashberg, A Givental and H Hofer, Introduction to Symplectic Field Theory, Geom. Funct. Anal. Special Volume, Part II (2000) 560--673].…

For an embedded singly periodic minimal surface M with genus bigger than or equal to 4 and annular ends, some weak symmetry hypotheses imply its congruence with one of the Hoffman-Wohlgemuth examples. We give a very geometrical proof of…

We construct a minimal complex surface of general type with $p_g=0$, $K^2 =4$, and $\pi_1=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$ using a rational blow-down surgery and a $\mathbb{Q}$-Gorenstein smoothing theory. In a similar fashion, we also construct a…

We use rudiments of the Seiberg-Witten gluing theory for trivial circle bundles over a Riemann surface to relate de Seiberg-Witten basic classes of two $4$-manifolds containing Riemann surfaces of the same genus and self-intersection zero…

We observe that nonzero Gromov-Witten invariants with marked point constraints in a closed symplectic manifold imply restrictions on the homology classes that can be represented by contact hypersurfaces. As a special case, contact…

We study McDuff-Salamon's Problem 46 by showing that there exist closed manifolds of dimension $\geq 6$ admitting cohomologous symplectic forms with different Gromov widths. The examples are motivated by Ruan's early example of deformation…

Delzant's theorem for symplectic toric manifolds says that there is a one-to-one correspondence between certain convex polytopes in $\mathbb{R}^n$ and symplectic toric $2n$-manifolds, realized by the image of the moment map. I review proofs…