Related papers: A unique decomposition theorem for tight contact 3…
We build handle decompositions of n-manifolds that encode given open book decompositions and describe handle slides that reveal new open book decompositions on the same underlying manifold, for $n \geq 3$. This recovers known stabilization…
In this note we make several observations concerning symplectic cobordisms. Among other things we show that every contact 3-manifold has infinitely many concave symplectic fillings and that all overtwisted contact 3-manifolds are…
The theory of complex hyperbolic discrete groups is still in its childhood but promises to grow into a rich subfield of geometry. In this paper I will discuss some recent progress that has been made on complex hyperbolic deformations of the…
The open book decompositions of the 3-sphere whose pages are pairs of pants have been fully understood for some time, through the lens of contact geometry. The purpose of this note is to exhibit a purely topological derivation of the…
The goal of this paper is to investigate the topological structure of open simply-connected 3-manifolds whose scalar curvature has a slow decay at infinity. In particular, we show that the Whitehead manifold does not admit a complete…
We compute the cylindrical contact homology of the links of the simple singularities. These manifolds are contactomorphic to $S^3/G$ for finite subgroups $G\subset\text{SU}(2)$. We perturb the degenerate contact form on $S^3/G$ with a Morse…
We consider the problem of realizing tight contact structures on closed orientable three-manifolds. By applying the theorems of Hofer et al., one may deduce tightness from dynamical properties of (Reeb) flows transverse to the contact…
A configuration of points and lines is cyclic if it has an automorphism which permutes its points in a full cycle. A closed formula is derived for the number of non-isomorphic connected cyclic configurations of type (v_3), i.e., which have…
This is a revision of some expository lecture notes written originally for a 5-hour minicourse on the intersection theory of punctured holomorphic curves and its applications in 3-dimensional contact topology. The main lectures are aimed…
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 show that if a closed atoroidal 3-manifold M contains a genuine lamination, then it is group negatively curved in the sense of Gromov. Specifically, we exploit the structure of the non-product complementary regions of the genuine…
In this paper it is proven that there is at most one way, up to isotopy, in which a connected, hyperbolic, orientable 3-manifold can fiber over the circle with monodromy in the Torelli group.
Given two closed contact three-manifolds, one can form their contact connected sum via the Weinstein one-handle attachment. We study how pseudo-holomorphic curves in the symplectization behave under this operation. As a result, we give a…
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,…
We prove that every closed, connected contact 3-manifold can be obtained from the 3-sphere with its standard contact structure by contact surgery of coefficient plus or minus 1 along a Legendrian link. As a corollary, we derive a result of…
A special spine of a three-manifold is said to be poor if it does not contain proper simple subpolyhedra. Using the Turaev-Viro invariants, we establish that every compact three-dimensional manifold M with connected nonempty boundary has a…
We prove that the group of strict contactomorphisms of the standard tight contact structure on the three-sphere deformation retracts to its unitary subgroup U(2).
A filling Dehn sphere $\Sigma$ in a closed 3-manifold $M$ is a sphere transversely immersed in $M$ that defines a cell decomposition of $M$. Every closed 3-manifold has a filling Dehn sphere. The Montesinos complexity of a $3$-manifold $M$…
We consider edge decompositions of $K_v^{(3)}-I$, the complete 3-uniform hypergraph of order $v$ minus a 1-factor (parallel class, packing of $v/3$ disjoint edges). We prove that a decomposition into tight 6-cycles exists if and only if…
In recent times a great amount of progress has been achieved in symplectic and contact geometry, leading to the development of powerful invariants of 3-manifolds such as Heegaard Floer homology and embedded contact homology. These…