Let $(X^{m+1}, g)$ be a globally hyperbolic spacetime with Cauchy surface diffeomorphic to an open subset of $\mathbb R^m$. The Legendrian Low conjecture formulated by Natário and Tod says that two events $x,y\inß$ are causally related if and only if the Legendrian link of spheres $\mathfrak S_x, \mathfrak S_y$ whose points are light geodesics passing through $x$ and $y$ is non-trivial in the contact manifold of all light geodesics in $X$. The Low conjecture says that for $m=2$ the events $x,y$ are causally related if and only if $\mathfrak S_x, \mathfrak S_y$ is non-trivial as a topological link. We prove the Low and the Legendrian Low conjectures. We also show that similar statements hold for any globally hyperbolic $(X^{m+1}, g)$ such that a cover of its Cauchy surface is diffeomorphic to an open domain in $\mathbb R^m.$
Let $(X^{m+1}, g)$ be an $(m+1)$-dimensional globally hyperbolic spacetime with Cauchy surface $M^m$, and let $\widetilde M^m$ be the universal cover of the Cauchy surface. Let $\mathcal N_{X}$ be the contact manifold of all future directed unparameterized light rays in $X$ that we identify with the spherical cotangent bundle $ST^*M.$ Jointly with Stefan Nemirovski we showed when $\widetilde M^m$ is {\bf not\/} a compact manifold, then two points $x, y\in X$ are causally related if and only if the Legendrian spheres $\mathfrak S_x, \mathfrak S_y$ of all light rays through $x$ and $y$ are linke…
We study Legendrian singular links up to contact isotopy. Using a special property of the singular points, we define the singular connected sum of Legendrian singular links. This concept is a generalization of the connected sum and can be interpreted as a tangle replacement, which provides a way to classify Legendrian singular links. Moreover, we investigate several phenomena only occur in the Legendrian setup.
The surgery unknotting number of a Legendrian link is defined as the minimal number of particular oriented surgeries that are required to convert the link into a Legendrian unknot. Lower bounds for the surgery unknotting number are given in terms of classical invariants of the Legendrian link. The surgery unknotting number is calculated for every Legendrian link that is topologically a twist knot or a torus link and for every positive, Legendrian rational link. In addition, the surgery unknotting number is calculated for every Legendrian knot in the Legendrian knot atlas of Chongchitmate and N…
In this paper, we study contact surgeries along Legendrian links in the standard contact 3-sphere. On one hand, we use algebraic methods to prove the vanishing of the contact Ozsváth-Szabó invariant for contact $(+1)$-surgery along certain Legendrian two-component links. The main tool is a link surgery formula for Heegaard Floer homology developed by Manolescu and Ozsváth. On the other hand, we use contact-geometric argument to show the overtwistedness of the contact 3-manifolds obtained by contact $(+1)$-surgeries along Legendrian two-component links whose two components are linked in some sp…
We show that a link in an open book can be realized as a strongly quasipositive braid if and only if it bounds a Legendrian ribbon with respect to the associated contact structure. This generalizes a result due to Baader and Ishikawa for links in the three-sphere. We highlight some related techniques for determining whether or not a link is strongly quasipositive, emphasizing applications to fibered links and satellites.
We prove that there are at least as many exact embedded Lagrangian fillings as seeds for Legendrian links of affine type $\tilde{\mathsf{D}} \tilde{\mathsf{E}}$. We also provide as many Lagrangian fillings with certain symmetries as seeds of type $\tilde{\mathsf{B}}_n$, $\tilde{\mathsf{F}}_4$, $\tilde{\mathsf{G}}_2$, and $\mathsf{E}_6^{(2)}$. These families are the first known Legendrian links with infinitely many fillings that exhaust all seeds in the corresponding cluster structures. Furthermore, we show that Legendrian realization of Coxeter mutation of type $\tilde{\mathsf{D}}$ corresponds…
We use the spanning tree model for Khovanov homology to study Legendrian links. This leads to an alternative proof for Ng's Khovanov bound for the Thurston-Bennequin number and to both a necessary and a sufficient condition for this bound to be sharp.
We study an $A_\infty$ category associated to Legendrian links in $\mathbb{R}^3$ whose objects are $n$-dimensional representations of the Chekanov-Eliashberg differential graded algebra of the link. This representation category generalizes the positive augmentation category and we conjecture that it is equivalent to a category of sheaves of microlocal rank $n$ constructed by Shende, Treumann, and Zaslow. We establish the cohomological version of this conjecture for a family of Legendrian $(2,m)$ torus links.
We prove that there are at least seeds many exact embedded Lagrangian fillings for Legendrian links of type $\mathsf{ADE}$. We also provide seeds many Lagrangian fillings with certain symmetries for type $\mathsf{BCFG}$. Our main tools are $N$-graphs and the combinatorics of seed patterns of finite type.
We introduce a notion of cardinality for the augmentation category associated to a Legendrian knot or link in standard contact R^3. This `homotopy cardinality' is an invariant of the category and allows for a weighted count of augmentations, which we prove to be determined by the ruling polynomial of the link. We present an application to the augmentation category of doubly Lagrangian slice knots.
Associated to Legendrian links in the standard contact three-space, Ruling polynomials are Legendrian isotopy invariants, which also compute augmentation numbers, that is, the points-counting of augmentation varieties for Legendrian links (up to a normalized factor) \cite{HR15}. In this article, we generalize this picture to Legendrian tangles, which are morally the pieces obtained by cutting Legendrian link fronts along 2 vertical lines. Moreover, we show that the Ruling polynomials for Legendrian tangles satisfy the composition axiom. In the special case of Legendrian knots, our arguments pr…
An elementary stabilization of a Legendrian link $L$ in the spherical cotangent bundle $ST^*M$ of a surface $M$ is a surgery that results in attaching a handle to $M$ along two discs away from the image in $M$ of the projection of the link $L$. A virtual Legendrian isotopy is a composition of stabilizations, destabilizations and Legendrian isotopies. In contrast to Legendrian knots, virtual Legendrian knots enjoy the property that there is a bijective correspondence between the virtual Legendrian knots and the equivalence classes of Gauss diagrams. We study virtual Legendrian isotopy classes o…
Given a Legendrian link in $\#^k(S^1\times S^2)$, we extend the definition of a normal ruling from $J^1(S^1)$ given by Lavrov and Rutherford and show that the existence of an augmentation to any field of the Chekanov-Eliashberg differential graded algebra over $\mathbb{Z}[t,t^{-1}]$ is equivalent to the existence of a normal ruling of the front diagram. For Legendrian knots, we also show that any even graded augmentation must send $t$ to $-1$. We use the correspondence to give nonvanishing results for the symplectic homology of certain Weinstein $4$-manifolds. We show a similar correspondence …
For a Legendrian $(2,n)$ torus knot or link with maximal Thurston-Bennequin number, Ekholm, Honda, and Kálmán constructed $C_n$ exact Lagrangian fillings, where $C_n$ is the $n$-th Catalan number. We show that these exact Lagrangian fillings are pairwise non-isotopic through exact Lagrangian isotopy. To do that, we compute the augmentations induced by the exact Lagrangian fillings $L$ to $\mathbb{Z}_2[H_1(L)]$ and distinguish the resulting augmentations.
We present the first examples of elements in the fundamental group of the space of Legendrian links in the standard contact 3-sphere whose action on the Legendrian contact DGA is of infinite order. This allows us to construct the first families of Legendrian links that can be shown to admit infinitely many Lagrangian fillings by Floer-theoretic techniques. These families include the first known Legendrian links with infinitely many fillings that are not rainbow closures of positive braids, and the smallest Legendrian link with infinitely many fillings known to date. We discuss how to use our e…
For Legendrian links in the 1-jet space of $S^1$ we show that the 1-graded ruling polynomial may be recovered from the Kauffman skein module. For such links a generalization of the notion of normal ruling is introduced. We show that the existence of such a generalized normal ruling is equivalent to sharpness of the Kauffman polynomial estimate for the Thurston-Bennequin number as well as to the existence of an ungraded augmentation of the Chekanov-Eliashberg DGA. Parallel results involving the HOMFLY-PT polynomial and 2-graded generalized normal rulings are established.
We show that for any Legendrian link $L$ in the $1$-jet space of $S^1$ the $2$-graded ruling polynomial, $R^2_L(z)$, is determined by the Thurston-Bennequin number and the HOMFLY-PT polynomial. Specifically, we recover $R^2_L(z)$ as a coefficient of a particular specialization of the HOMFLY-PT polynomial. Furthermore, we show that this specialization may be interpreted as the standard inner product on the algebra of symmetric functions that is often identified with a certain subalgebra of the HOMFLY-PT skein module of the solid torus. In contrast to the $2$-graded case, we are able to use $0$-…
In this paper, we show that any topological knot or link in $S^1 \times S^2$ sits on a planar page of an open book decomposition whose monodromy is a product of positive Dehn twists. As a consequence, any knot or link type in $S^1 \times S^2$ has a Legendrian representative having support genus zero. We also show this holds for some knots and links in the lens spaces $L(p,1)$.
Let $Λ$ be a link of Legendrian spheres in the boundary of a subcritical $2n$-dimensional Weinstein manifold $X$. We show that, under some geometrical assumptions, the computation of the Legendrian contact homology of $Λ$ can be reduced to a computation of Legendrian contact homology in 1--jet spaces. Since the Legendrian contact homology in 1--jet spaces is well studied, this gives a simplified way to compute the Legendrian contact homology of $Λ$. We restrict to the case when the attaching spheres of the subcritical handles of $X$ do not interact with each other, and we assume that there are…
Arboreal singularities are an important class of Lagrangian singularities. They are conical, meaning that they can be understood by studying their links, which are singular Legendrian spaces in $S^{2n-1}_{\text{std}}$. Loose Legendrians are a class of Legendrian spaces which satisfy an $h$--principle, meaning that their geometric classification is in bijective correspondence with their topological types. For the particular case of the linear arboreal singularities, we show that constructable sheaves suffice to detect whether any closed set of an arboreal link is loose.
On a negatively curved surface, we show that the Poincar{é} series counting geodesic arcs orthogonal to some pair of closed geodesic curves has a meromorphic continuation to the whole complex plane. When both curves are homologically trivial, we prove that the Poincar{é} series has an explicit rational value at 0 interpreting it in terms of linking number of Legendrian knots. In particular, for any pair of points on the surface, the lengths of all geodesic arcs connecting the two points determine its genus, and, for any pair of homologically trivial closed geodesics, the lengths of all geodesi…
Many interesting spaces --- including all positroid strata and wild character varieties --- are moduli of constructible sheaves on a surface with microsupport in a Legendrian link. We show that the existence of cluster structures on these spaces may be deduced in a uniform, systematic fashion by constructing and taking the sheaf quantizations of a set of exact Lagrangian fillings in correspondence with isotopy representatives whose front projections have crossings with alternating orientations. It follows in turn that results in cluster algebra may be used to construct and distinguish exact La…
We prove that the LOSS and GRID invariants of Legendrian links in knot Floer homology behave in certain functorial ways with respect to decomposable Lagrangian cobordisms in the symplectization of the standard contact structure on $\mathbb{R}^3$. Our results give new, computable, and effective obstructions to the existence of such cobordisms.
We construct closed arboreal Lagrangian skeleta associated to links of isolated plane curve singularities. This yields closed arboreal Lagrangian skeleta for Weinstein pairs and Weinstein 4-manifolds associated to max-tb Legendrian representatives of algebraic links. We provide computations of Legendrian and Weinstein invariants, and discuss the symplectic topological nature of the Fomin-Pylyavskyy-Shustin-Thurston cluster algebra associated to a singularity. Finally, we present a conjectural ADE-classification for Lagrangian fillings of certain Legendrian links and list some related problems.
