Related papers: Partially ordered groups and geometry of contact t…

We introduce a pseudo-metric on the contactomorphism group of any contact manifold $(M,\xi)$ with a cooriented contact structure $\xi$. It is the contact analogue of a corresponding semi-norm in Hofer's geometry, and on certain classes of…

We are concerned with orderable groups and particularly those with orderings invariant not only under multiplication, but also under a given automorphism or family of automorphisms. Several applications to topology are given: we prove that…

We show that the identity component of the group of diffeomorphisms of a closed oriented surface of positive genus admits many unbounded quasi-morphisms. As a corollary, we also deduce that this group is not uniformly perfect and its…

Let S be a compact surface - or the interior of a compact surface - and let V be the manifold of cooriented contact elements of S equiped with its canonical contact structure. A diffeomorphism of V that preserves the contact structure and…

It is a well known result in the covering groups that a subgroup $G$ of the fundamental group at the identity of a semi-locally simply connected topological group determines a covering morphism of topological groups with characteristic…

We use differential forms on loop spaces to prove that the fundamental group of certain geometric transformation groups is infinite. Examples include both finite and infinite dimensional Lie groups. The finite dimensional examples are the…

We extract a nonnegative integer-valued invariant, which we call the "order of algebraic torsion", from the Symplectic Field Theory of a closed contact manifold, and show that its finiteness gives obstructions to the existence of symplectic…

We relate non-orderability in contact topology to shortening in the contact Hofer norm. Combined with considerations of open books, this provides many new examples of non-orderable contact manifolds, including contact boundaries of…

The contact invariant is an element in the monopole Floer homology groups of an oriented closed three manifold canonically associated to a given contact structure. A non-vanishing contact invariant implies that the original contact…

In this note, we consider contractible loops of contactomorphisms that are positive over some non-empty closed subset of a contact manifold. Such closed subsets are called immaterial. We argue that the complement of a Reeb-invariant…

We show the existence of elements of infinite order in some homotopy groups of the contactomorphism group of overtwisted spheres. It follows in particular that the contactomorphism group of some high dimensional overtwisted spheres is not…

We show the irreducibility of some unitary representations of the group of symplectomorphisms and the group of contactomorphisms.

Cosymplectic and normal almost contact structures are analogues of symplectic and complex structures that can be defined on 3-manifolds. Their existence imposes strong topological constraints. Generalized geometry offers a natural common…

We show that contact reductions can be described in terms of symplectic reductions in the traditional Marsden-Weinstein-Meyer as well as the constant rank picture. The point is that we view contact structures as particular (homogeneous)…

We show that an oriented elliptic 3-manifold admits a universally tight positive contact structure iff the corresponding group of deck transformations on $S^3$ preserves a standard contact structure pointwise. We also relate univerally…

We extend Fedosov deformation quantization to general contact manifolds. Unlike the case of symplectic manifolds, not every classical observable on a contact manifold is generally quantized. On examination of possible obstructions to…

Given a cooriented contact manifold $(M,\xi)$, it is possible to define a notion of positivity on the group $\mathrm{Diff}(M)$ of diffeomorphisms of $M$, by looking at paths of diffeomorphisms that are positively transverse to the contact…

In this paper, we prove that on any contact manifold, there exists an arbitrary C^{\infty}-small contactomorphism which does not admit a square root. In particular, there exists an arbitrary C^{\infty}-small contactomorphism which is not…

Partial connections are (singular) differential systems generalizing classical connections on principal bundles, yielding analogous decompositions for manifolds with nonfree group actions. Connection forms are interpreted as maps…

We consider the standard Darboux space equipped with the radial symmetric contact form. We study co-orientation preserving contactomorphisms between relatively compact domains up to the boundary. We determine the contactomorphism classes…