Explicit horizontal open books on some Seifert fibered 3-manifolds

We describe explicit horizontal open books on some Seifert fibered 3-manifolds. We show that the contact structures compatible with these horizontal open books are Stein fillable and horizontal as well. Moreover we draw surgery diagrams for some of these contact structures.     

Tight contact structures on solid tori

In this paper we study properties of tight contact structures on solid tori. In particular we discuss ways of distinguishing two solid tori with tight contact structures. We also give examples of unusual tight contact structures on solid tori.

We prove the existence of a -valued and a -valued invariant of a closed solid torus. We call them the self-linking number and the rotation number respectively. We then extend these definitions to the case of an open solid torus. We show that these invariants exhibit certain monotonicity properties with respect to inclusion. We also prove a number of results which give sufficient conditions for two solid tori to be contactomorphic.

At the same time we discuss various ways of constructing a tight contact structure on a solid torus. We then produce examples of solid tori with tight contact structures and calculate self-linking and rotation numbers for these tori. These examples show that the invariants we defined do not give a complete classification of tight contact structure on open solid tori.

At the end, we construct a family of tight contact structure on a solid torus such that the induced contact structure on a finite-sheeted cover of that solid torus is no longer tight. This answers negatively a question asked by Eliashberg in 1990. We also give an example of tight contact structure on an open solid torus which cannot be contactly embedded into a sphere with the standard contact structure, another example of unexpected behavior.

     

Invariants of contact structures from open books

In this note we define three invariants of contact structures in terms of open books supporting the contact structures. These invariants are the support genus (which is the minimal genus of a page of a supporting open book for the contact structure), the binding number (which is the minimal number of binding components of a supporting open book for the contact structure with minimal genus pages) and the norm (which is minus the maximal Euler characteristic of a page of a supporting open book).

     

Closed minimal surfaces in cusped hyperbolic three-manifolds

We introduce essential open book foliations by refining open book foliations, and develop technical estimates of the fractional Dehn twist coefficient (FDTC) of monodromies and the FDTC for closed braids, which we introduce as well. As applications, we quantitatively study the ‘gap’ between overtwisted contact structures and non-right-veering monodromies. We give sufficient conditions for a 3-manifold to be irreducible and atoroidal. We also show that the geometries of a 3-manifold and the complement of a closed braid are determined by the Nielsen–Thurston types of the monodromies of their open book decompositions.     

Open book decompositions for contact structures on Brieskorn manifolds

In this paper, we give an open book decomposition for the contact structures on some Brieskorn manifolds, in particular for the contact structures of Ustilovsky. The decomposition uses right-handed Dehn twists as conjectured by Giroux.

     

Brieskorn manifolds as contact branched covers of spheres

We show that Brieskorn manifolds with their standard contact structures are contact branched coverings of spheres. This covering maps a contact open book decomposition of the Brieskorn manifold onto a Milnor open book of the sphere.      

Khovanov homology, open books, and tight contact structures

We define the reduced Khovanov homology of an open book (S,?), and identify a distinguished “contact element” in this group which may be used to establish the tightness or non-fillability of contact structures compatible with (S,?). Our construction generalizes the relationship between the reduced Khovanov homology of a link and the Heegaard Floer homology of its branched double cover. As an application, we give combinatorial proofs of tightness for several contact structures which are not Stein-fillable. Lastly, we investigate a comultiplication structure on the reduced Khovanov homology of an open book which parallels the comultiplication on Heegaard Floer homology defined in Baldwin (2008) [4].     

Ozsváth-Szabó invariants and fillability of contact structures

Recently Ozsváth and Szabó defined an invariant of contact structures with values in the Heegaard-Floer homology groups. They also proved that a version of the invariant with twisted coefficients is non trivial for weakly symplectically fillable contact structures. In this article we show that their non vanishing result does not hold in general for the contact invariant with untwisted coefficients. As a consequence of this fact Heegaard-Floer theory can distinguish between weakly and strongly symplectically fillable contact structures. The author is a member of EDGE, Research Training Network HPRN-CT-2000-00101, supported by The European Human Potential Programme.     

Constructions in Sasakian geometry

We first generalize the join construction described previously by the first two authors [4] for quasi-regular Sasakian-Einstein orbifolds to the general quasi-regular Sasakian case. This allows for the further construction of specific types of Sasakian structures that are preserved under the join operation, such as positive, negative, or null Sasakian structures, as well as Sasakian-Einstein structures. In particular, we show that there are families of Sasakian-Einstein structures on certain 7-manifolds homeomorphic to S ² × S ⁵. We next show how the join construction emerges as a special case of Lerman’s contact fibre bundle construction [32]. In particular, when both the base and the fiber of the contact fiber bundle are toric we show that the construction yields a new toric Sasakian manifold. Finally, we study toric Sasakian manifolds in dimension 5 and show that any simply-connected compact oriented 5-manifold with vanishing torsion admits regular toric Sasakian structures. This is accomplished by explicitly constructing circle bundles over the equivariant blow-ups of Hirzebruch surfaces. During the preparation of this work the first two authors were partially supported by NSF grants DMS-0203219 and DMS-0504367.     

Elliptic open books on torus bundles over the circle

As an application of the construction of open books on plumbed 3-manifolds, we construct elliptic open books on torus bundles over the circle. In certain cases these open books are compatible with Stein fillable contact structures and have minimal genus.      

On the equivalence of quaternionic contact structures

Following the Cartan’s original method of equivalence supported by methods of parabolic geometry, we provide a complete solution for the equivalence problem of quaternionic contact structures, that is, the problem of finding a complete system of differential invariants for two quaternionic contact manifolds to be locally diffeomorphic. This includes an explicit construction of the corresponding Cartan geometry and detailed information on all curvature components.     

Admissible transverse surgery does not preserve tightness

We produce the first examples of closed, tight contact 3-manifolds which become overtwisted after performing admissible transverse surgeries. Along the way, we clarify the relationship between admissible transverse surgery and Legendrian surgery. We use this clarification to study a new invariant of transverse knots—namely, the range of slopes on which admissible transverse surgery preserves tightness—and to provide some new examples of knot types which are not uniformly thick. Our examples also illuminate several interesting new phenomena, including the existence of hyperbolic, universally tight contact 3-manifolds whose Heegaard Floer contact invariants vanish (and which are not weakly fillable); and the existence of open books with arbitrarily high fractional Dehn twist coefficients whose compatible contact structures are not deformations of co-orientable taut foliations.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">g</Emphasis>-Natural Contact Metrics on Unit Tangent Sphere Bundles

We construct a three-parameter family of contact metric structures on the unit tangent sphere bundle T ₁ M of a Riemannian manifold M and we study some of their special properties related to the Levi-Civita connection. More precisely, we give the necessary and sufficient conditions for a constructed contact metric structure to be K-contact, Sasakian, to satisfy some variational conditions or to define a strongly pseudo-convex CR-structure. The obtained results generalize classical theorems on the standard contact metric structure of T ₁ M. Author supported by funds of the University of Lecce.     

An Ozsváth–Szabó Floer homology invariant of knots in a contact manifold

Using the knot Floer homology filtration, we define invariants associated to a knot in a three-manifold possessing non-vanishing Floer co(homology) classes. In the case of the Ozsváth–Szabó contact invariant we obtain an invariant of knots in a contact three-manifold. This invariant provides an upper bound for the Thurston–Bennequin plus rotation number of any Legendrian realization of the knot. We use it to demonstrate the first systematic construction of prime knots in contact manifolds other than S³ with negative maximal Thurston–Bennequin invariant. Perhaps more interesting, our invariant provides a criterion for an open book to induce a tight contact structure. A corollary is that if a manifold possesses contact structures with distinct non-vanishing Ozsváth–Szabó invariants, then any fibered knot can realize the classical Eliashberg–Bennequin bound in at most one of these contact structures.     

Homotopy classification of contact foliations on open contact manifolds

We give a homotopy classification of foliations on open contact manifolds whose leaves are contact submanifolds of the ambient space. The result is an extension of Haefliger’s classification of foliations on open manifold in the contact setting. While proving the main theorem, we also prove a result on equidimensional isocontact immersions on open contact manifolds.     

Efficiently solvable special cases of hard combinatorial optimization problems

We survey some recent advances in the field of polynomially solvable special cases of hard combinatorial optimization problems like the travelling salesman problem, quadratic assignment problems and Steiner tree problems. Such special cases can be found by considering special cost structures, the geometry of the problem, the special topology of the underlying graph structure or by analyzing special algorithms. In particular we stress the importance of recognition algorithms. We comment on open problems in this area and outline some lines for future research in this field. This research has been supported by the Spezialforschungsbereich F 003 “Optimierung und Kontrolle”, Projektbereich Diskrete Optimierung.     

Tight, not semi–fillable contact circle bundles

Extending our earlier results, we prove that certain tight contact structures on circle bundles over surfaces are not symplectically semi–fillable, thus confirming a conjecture of Ko Honda.Mathematics Subject Classification (2000)57R57, 57R17Partially supported by MURST and member of EDGE, Research Training Network HPRN-CT-2000-00101, supported by The European Human Potential ProgrammePartially supported by OTKA T034885     

Inequivalent contact structures on Boothby–Wang five-manifolds

We consider contact structures on simply-connected five-manifolds which arise as circle bundles over simply-connected symplectic four-manifolds and show that invariants from contact homology are related to the divisibility of the canonical class of the symplectic structure. As an application we find new examples of inequivalent contact structures in the same equivalence class of almost contact structures with non-zero first Chern class.     

Right-veering diffeomorphisms of compact surfaces with boundary

We initiate the study of the monoid of right-veering diffeomorphisms on a compact oriented surface with nonempty boundary. The monoid strictly contains the monoid of products of positive Dehn twists. We explain the relationship to tight contact structures and open book decompositions. Mathematics Subject Classification (1991) Primary 57M50, secondary 53C15     

On existence of regular jacobi structures

We prove \(h\) -principle for locally conformal symplectic foliations and contact foliations on open manifolds. We then interpret the results in terms of regular Jacobi structures on manifolds.