Complementary legs and symplectic rational balls
Abstract
We show that a small Seifert fibered space with complementary legs does not symplectically bound a rational homology ball for at least one choice of orientation. In the case , we characterize when a small Seifert fibered space with uniquely complementary legs symplectically bounds a rational homology ball. In the case , we characterize when a small Seifert fibered space with complementary legs, equipped with a balanced contact structure, symplectically bounds a rational homology ball. Our results highlight a sharp contrast with the smooth category, where many more such Seifert fibered spaces are known to bound smooth rational homology balls. As a consequence of the results above, we also complete the classification of contact structures on oriented spherical -manifolds that admit symplectic rational homology ball fillings. In particular, we show that a closed, oriented -manifold with finite fundamental group admits at most six contact structures, up to isotopy, which are symplectically fillable by rational homology balls.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2505.04513,
title = {Complementary legs and symplectic rational balls},
author = {John B. Etnyre and Burak Ozbagci and Bülent Tosun},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.04513},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
43 pages, 13 figures, v2: corrected some errors and added some new corollaries