We study weak versus strong symplectic fillability of some tight contact structures on torus bundles over the circle. In particular, we prove that almost all of these tight contact structures are weakly, but not strongly symplectically fillable. For the 3-torus this theorem was established by Eliashberg.
In this paper, we study strong symplectic fillability and Stein fillability of some tight contact structures on negative parabolic and negative hyperbolic torus bundles over the circle. For the universally tight contact structure with twisting $π$ in $S^1$-direction on a negative parabolic torus bundle, we completely determine its strong symplectic fillability and Stein fillability. For the universally tight contact structure with twisting $π$ in $S^1$-direction on a negative hyperbolic torus bundle, we give a necessary condition for it being strongly symplectically fillable. For the virtually…
For contact manifolds in dimension three, the notions of weak and strong symplectic fillability and tightness are all known to be inequivalent. We extend these facts to higher dimensions: in particular, we define a natural generalization of weak fillings and prove that it is indeed weaker (at least in dimension five),while also being obstructed by all known manifestations of "overtwistedness". We also find the first examples of contact manifolds in all dimensions that are not symplectically fillable but also cannot be called overtwisted in any reasonable sense. These depend on a higher-dimensi…
In this article we provide an infinite family of weakly symplectically fillable contact structures with trivial Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariants over Z/2Z. As a consequence of this fact, we show how Heegaard-Floer theory can distinguish between weakly and strongly fillable contact structures.
According to Lerman, compact connected toric contact 3-manifolds with a non-free toric action whose moment cone spans an angle greater than $π$ are overtwisted, thus non-fillable. In contrast, we show that all compact connected toric contact manifolds in dimension greater than three are weakly symplectically fillable and most of them are strongly symplectically fillable. The proof is based on the Lerman's classification of toric contact manifolds and on our observation that the only contact manifolds in higher dimensions that admit free toric action are the cosphere bundle of $T^d, d\geq3$ $(T…
For any asymptotically dynamically convex contact manifold $Y$, we show that $SH_*(W)=0$ is a property independent of the choice of topologically simple (i.e.\ $c_1(W)=0$ and $π_{1}(Y)\rightarrow π_1(W)$ is injective) Liouville filling $W$. In particular, if $Y$ is the boundary of a flexible Weinstein domain, then any topologically simple Liouville filling $W$ has vanishing symplectic homology. As a consequence, we answer a question of Lazarev partially: a contact manifold $Y$ admitting flexible fillings determines the integral cohomology of all the topologically simple Liouville fillings of $…
Given a contact structure on a manifold $V$ together with a supporting open book decomposition, Bourgeois gave an explicit construction of a contact structure on $V \times \mathbb{T}^2$. We prove that all such structures are universally tight in dimension $5$, independent on whether the original contact manifold is itself tight or overtwisted. In arbitrary dimensions, we provide obstructions to the existence of strong symplectic fillings of Bourgeois manifolds. This gives a broad class of new examples of weakly but not strongly fillable contact $5$-manifolds, as well as the first examples of w…
The well-known tubular neighborhood theorem for contact submanifolds states that a small enough neighborhood of such a submanifold N is uniquely determined by the contact structure on N, and the conformal symplectic structure of the normal bundle. In particular, if the submanifold N has trivial normal bundle then its tubular neighborhood will be contactomorphic to a neighborhood of Nx{0} in the model space NxR^{2k}. In this article we make the observation that if (N,ξ_N) is a 3-dimensional overtwisted submanifold with trivial normal bundle in (M,ξ), and if its model neighborhood is sufficientl…
This paper investigates the symplectic and contact topology associated to circular spherical divisors. We classify, up to toric equivalence, all concave circular spherical divisors $ D $ that can be embedded symplectically into a closed symplectic 4-manifold and show they are all realized as symplectic log Calabi-Yau pairs if their complements are minimal. We then determine the Stein fillability and rational homology type of all minimal symplectic fillings for the boundary torus bundles of such $D$. When $ D $ is anticanonical and convex, we give explicit betti number bounds for Stein fillings…
We show that the pre-order defined on the category of contact manifolds by arbitrary symplectic cobordisms is considerably less rigid than its counterparts for exact or Stein cobordisms: in particular, we exhibit large new classes of contact 3-manifolds which are symplectically cobordant to something overtwisted, or to the tight 3-sphere, or which admit symplectic caps containing symplectically embedded spheres with vanishing self-intersection. These constructions imply new and simplified proofs of several recent results involving fillability, planarity and non-separating contact type embeddin…
This is the preliminary manuscript of a book on symplectic field theory based on a lecture course for PhD students given in 2015-16. It covers the essentials of the analytical theory of punctured pseudoholomorphic curves, taking the opportunity to fill in gaps in the existing literature where necessary, and then gives detailed explanations of a few of the standard applications in contact topology such as distinguishing contact structures up to contactomorphism and proving symplectic non-fillability.
We use Menke's JSJ-type decomposition theorem for symplectic fillings to reduce the classification of strong and exact symplectic fillings of virtually overtwisted torus bundles to the same problem for tight lens spaces. For virtually overtwisted structures on elliptic or parabolic torus bundles, this gives a complete classification. For virtually overtwisted structures on hyperbolic torus bundles, we show that every strong or exact filling arises from a filling of a tight lens space via round symplectic 1-handle attachment, and we give a condition under which distinct tight lens space filling…
In this note we study the contact geometry of symplectic divisors. We show the contact structure induced on the boundary of a divisor neighborhood is invariant under toric and interior blow-ups and blow-downs. We also construct an open book decomposition on the boundary of a concave divisor neighborhood and apply it to the study of universally tight contact structures of contact torus bundles.
We apply the method of filling with holomorphic discs to a 4-dimensional symplectic cobordism with the standard contact 3-sphere as a convex boundary component. We establish the following dichotomy: either the cobordism is diffeomorphic to a ball, or there is a periodic Reeb orbit of quantifiably short period in the concave boundary of the cobordism. This allows us to give a unified treatment of various results concerning Reeb dynamics on contact 3-manifolds, symplectic fillability, the topology of symplectic cobordisms, symplectic non-squeezing, and the non-existence of exact Lagrangian surfa…
A near-symplectic structure on a 4-manifold is a closed 2-form that is symplectic away from the 1-dimensional submanifold along which it vanishes and that satisfies a certain transversality condition along this vanishing locus. We investigate near-symplectic 4-manifolds equipped with singular Lagrangian torus fibrations which are locally induced by effective Hamiltonian torus actions. We show how such a structure is completely characterized by a singular integral affine structure on the base of the fibration whenever the vanishing locus is nonempty. The base equipped with this geometric struct…
We determine the Lagrangian monodromy group L(T) and the smooth monodromy group S(T) of a Clifford torus T in the symplectic 4-space. We show that L(T) is isomorphic to the infinite dihedral group, and S(T) is generated by three reflections. We give explicit formulas for both groups. We also show that if a Lagrangian torus is smoothly isotopic to a Clifford torus then the smooth isotopy can be chosen to be Lagrangian outside of a disc.
We define new Hamiltonian isotopy invariants for a monotone Lagrangian torus embedded in a symplectic 4-manifold. We show that, in the standard symplectic 4-space, these invariants distinguish a monotone Clifford torus from a Chekanov torus.
We prove that if an (n-1)-dimensional torus acts symplectically on a 2n-dimensional manifold, then the action has a fixed point if and only if the action is Hamiltonian. One may regard it as a symplectic version of Frankel theorem. The case of n=2 is the well known theorem of McDuff. From the well known example of McDuff (a six dimensional symplectic non-Hamiltonian circle action with fixed tori) and its products with copies of a two dimensional sphere with the usual rotation, the condition on the dimension of the acting torus is optimal to obtain the result.
We prove that the count of Maslov index 2 $J$-holomorphic discs passing through a generic point of a real Lagrangian submanifold in a closed spherically monotone symplectic manifold must be even. As a corollary, we exhibit a genuine real symplectic phenomenon in terms of involutions, namely that the Chekanov torus $\mathbb{T}_{\text{Chek}}$ in $S^2\times S^2$, which is a monotone Lagrangian torus not Hamiltonian isotopic to the Clifford torus $\mathbb{T}_{\text{Clif}}$, can be seen as the fixed point set of a smooth involution, but not of an antisymplectic involution.
In this paper we present an explicit construction of a relative symplectic packing. This confirms the sharpness of the upper bound for the relative packing of a ball into the pair (CP^2, T^2) of the standard complex projective plane and the Clifford torus, obtained by Biran and Cornea.
Let E be the total space of a locally trivial torus bundle over the surface Σ_g of genus g>1. Using the Seiberg--Witten theory and spectral sequences we prove that E carries a symplectic structure if and only if the homology class of the fiber [T^2] is nonzero in H_2(E,R).
We determine the homotopy type of isotropic torus complements in closed contact manifolds in terms of Reeb dynamics of special contact forms. For that we utilize holomorphic curve techniques known from symplectic field theory as Gromov-Hofer compactness and localized transversality on non-compact contact manifolds.
A manifold obtained by k simultaneous symplectic blow-ups of CP^2 of equal sizes epsilon (where the size of CP^1 \subset CP^2 is one) admits an effective two dimensional torus action if k <= 3 and admits an effective circle action if (k-1)epsilon < 1. We show that these bounds are sharp if 1/epsilon is an integer.
Given a symplectic manifold, we ask in how many different ways can a torus act on it. Classification theorems in equivariant symplectic geometry can sometimes tell that two Hamiltonian torus actions are inequivalent, but often they do not tell whether the underlying symplectic manifolds are (non-equivariantly) symplectomorphic. For two dimensional torus actions on closed symplectic four-manifolds, we reduce the counting question to combinatorics, by expressing the manifold as a symplectic blowup in a way that is compatible with all the torus actions simultaneously. For this we use the theory o…
We consider exact fillings with vanishing first Chern class of asymptotically dynamically convex (ADC) manifolds. We construct two structure maps on the positive symplectic cohomology and prove that they are independent of the filling for ADC manifolds. The invariance of the structure maps implies that the vanishing of symplectic cohomology and the existence of symplectic dilations are properties independent of the filling for ADC manifolds. Using them, various topological applications on symplectic fillings are obtained, including the uniqueness of diffeomorphism types of fillings for many co…
This paper determines a condition that is necessary and sufficient for a metaplectic-c prequantizable symplectic manifold with an effective Hamiltonian torus action to admit an equivariant metaplectic-c prequantization. The condition is evaluated at a fixed point of the momentum map, and is shifted from the one that is known for equivariant prequantization line bundles. Given a metaplectic-c prequantized symplectic manifold with a Hamiltonian energy function, the author previously proposed a condition under which a regular value of the function should be considered a quantized energy level of …
In this paper we completely classify symplectic actions of a torus $T$ on a compact connected symplectic manifold $(M, σ)$ when some, hence every, principal orbit is a coisotropic submanifold of $(M, σ)$. That is, we construct an explicit model, defined in terms of certain invariants, of the manifold, the torus action and the symplectic form. The invariants are invariants of the topology of the manifold, of the torus action, or of the symplectic form. In order to deal with symplectic actions which are not Hamiltonian, we develop new techniques, extending the theory of Atiyah, Guillemin-Sternbe…
In \cite{btoric}, Guillemin et al. proved a Delzant-type theorem which classifies $b$-symplectic toric manifolds. More generally, in \cite{torus} they proved a similar convexity result for general Hamiltonian torus action on $b$-symplectic manifolds. In this paper, we provide a new way to construct $b$-symplectic toric manifolds from usual toric manifolds. Conversely, through this way, we can also decompose a $b$-symplectic toric manifolds to usual toric manifolds. Finally, we will try to prove that this kind of decomposition is useful, although the symplectic structure for our decomposition o…
We consider two natural Lagrangian intersection problems in the context of symplectic toric manifolds: displaceability of torus orbits and of a torus orbit with the real part of the toric manifold. Our remarks address the fact that one can use simple cartesian product and symplectic reduction considerations to go from basic examples to much more sophisticated ones. We show in particular how rigidity results for the above Lagrangian intersection problems in weighted projective spaces can be combined with these considerations to prove analogous results for all monotone toric symplectic manifolds…
This paper examines the relationship between the symplectic quotient X//G of a Hamiltonian G-manifold X, and the associated symplectic quotient X//T, where T is a maximal torus, in the case in which X//G is a compact manifold or orbifold. The three main results are: a formula expressing the rational cohomology ring of X//G in terms of the rational cohomology ring of X//T; an `integration' formula, which expresses cohomology pairings on X//G in terms of cohomology pairings on X//T; and an index formula, which expresses the indices of elliptic operators on X//G in terms of indices on X//T. (The …
We prove several results on weak symplectic fillings of contact 3-manifolds, including: (1) Every weak filling of any planar contact manifold can be deformed to a blow up of a Stein filling. (2) Contact manifolds that have fully separating planar torsion are not weakly fillable - this gives many new examples of contact manifolds without Giroux torsion that have no weak fillings. (3) Weak fillability is preserved under splicing of contact manifolds along symplectic pre-Lagrangian tori - this gives many new examples of contact manifolds without Giroux torsion that are weakly but not strongly fil…
In [GMPS] we proved that the moment map image of a $b$-symplectic toric manifold is a convex $b$-polytope. In this paper we obtain convexity results for the more general case of non-toric hamiltonian torus actions on $b$-symplectic manifolds. The modular weights of the action on the connected components of the exceptional hypersurface play a fundamental role: either they are all zero and the moment map behaves as in classic symplectic one, or they are all nonzero and the moment map behaves as in the toric $b$-symplectic case studied in [GMPS].
The purpose of this note is to study the bounded isometry conjecture proposed by Lalonde and Polterovich. In particular, we show that the conjecture holds for the Kodaira-Thurston manifold with the standard symplectic form and for the 4-torus with all linear symplectic forms.
Symplectic torus bundles $ξ:T^{2}\to E\to B$ are classified by the second cohomology group of $B$ with local coefficients $H_{1}(T^{2})$. For $B$ a compact, orientable surface, the main theorem of this paper gives a necessary and sufficient condition on the cohomology class corresponding to $ξ$ for $E$ to admit a symplectic structure compatible with the symplectic bundle structure of $ξ$ : namely, that it be a torsion class. The proof is based on a group-extension-theoretic construction of J. Huebschmann (Sur les premieres differentielles de la suite spectrale cohomologique d'une extension de …
This paper gives methods for understanding invariants of symplectic quotients. The symplectic quotients considered here are compact symplectic manifolds (or more generally orbifolds), which arise as the symplectic quotients of a symplectic manifold by a compact torus. (A companion paper examines symplectic quotients by a nonabelian group, showing how to reduce to the maximal torus.) Let X be a symplectic manifold, with a Hamiltonian action of a compact torus T. The main topological result of this paper describes an explicit cobordism that exists between a symplectic quotient of X by T, and a c…
We prove the invariant of the symplectic capacity for the Zakharov system on a torus. If the Zakharov solution map is well-defined, then it can be regarded as a symplectomorphism. Thus, we first show the global well-posedness via the local well-posedness and the conservation law. The invariant of the symplectic capacity can be obtained using an approximation method. Many authors use an approximation method to obtain the nonsqueezing theorem, instead of an invariant of the symplectic capacity. However, the conditions of the Hamiltonian system introduced by Kuksin can be relaxed by a new modifie…
Suppose that $X$ is a torus bundle over a closed surface with homologically essential fibers. Let $X_K$ be the manifold obtained by Fintushel--Stern knot surgery on a fiber using a knot $K\subset S^3$. We prove that $X_K$ has a symplectic structure if and only if $K$ is a fibered knot. The proof uses Seiberg--Witten theory and a result of Friedl--Vidussi on twisted Alexander polynomials.
We exhibit monotone Lagrangian tori inside the standard symplectic four-dimensional unit ball that become Hamiltonian isotopic to the Clifford torus, i.e.~the standard product torus, only when considered inside a strictly larger ball (they are not even symplectomorphic to a standard torus inside the unit ball). These tori are then used to construct new examples of symplectic embeddings of toric domains into the unit ball which are symplectically knotted in the sense of J.~Gutt and M.~Usher. We also give a characterisation of the Clifford torus inside the ball as well as the projective plane in…
We show how to construct a resolution of symplectic orbifolds obtained as quotients of presymplectic manifolds with a torus action. As a corollary, this allows us to desingularise generic symplectic quotients. Given a manifold with a Hamiltonian action of a compact Lie group, symplectic reduction at a coadjoint orbit which is transverse to the moment map produces a symplectic orbifold. If moreover the points of this coadjoint orbit are regular elements of the Lie coalgebra, that is, their stabiliser is a maximal torus, the result for torus quotients may be applied to obtain a desingularisation…
We identify a family of torus representations such that the corresponding singular symplectic quotients at the $0$-level of the moment map are graded regularly symplectomorphic to symplectic quotients associated to representations of the circle. For a subfamily of these torus representations, we give an explicit description of each symplectic quotient as a Poisson differential space with global chart as well as a complete classification of the graded regular diffeomorphism and symplectomorphism classes. Finally, we give explicit examples to indicate that symplectic quotients in this class may …
In this paper, we study Hamiltonian R-actions on symplectic orbifolds [M/S], where R and S are tori. We prove an injectivity theorem and generalize Tolman-Weitsman's proof of the GKM theorem in this setting. The main example is the symplectic reduction X//S of a Hamiltonian T-manifold X by a subtorus S of T. This includes the class of symplectic toric orbifolds. We define the equivariant Chen-Ruan cohomology ring and use the above results to establish a combinatorial method of computing this equivariant Chen-Ruan cohomology in terms of orbifold fixed point data.
We prove that every strong symplectic filling of a planar contact manifold admits a symplectic Lefschetz fibration over the disk, and every strong filling of the 3-torus similarly admits a Lefschetz fibration over the annulus. It follows that strongly fillable planar contact structures are also Stein fillable, and all strong fillings of the 3-torus are equivalent up to symplectic deformation and blowup. These constructions result from a compactness theorem for punctured J-holomorphic curves that foliate a convex symplectic manifold. We use it also to show that the compactly supported symplecto…
We show that the union of a meridian and a longitude of the symplectic 2-torus is superheavy in the sense of Entov-Polterovich. By a result of Entov-Polterovich, this implies that the product of this union and the Clifford torus of $\mathbb{C}P^n$ with the Fubini-Study symplectic form cannot be displaced by symplectomorphisms.
Let M be a compact, connected symplectic 2n-dimensional manifold on which an(n-2)-dimensional torus T acts effectively and Hamiltonianly. Under the assumption that there is an effective complementary 2-torus acting on M with symplectic orbits, we show that the Duistermaat-Heckman measure of the T-action is log-concave. This verifies the logarithmic concavity conjecture for a class of inequivalent T-actions. Then we use this conjecture to prove the following: if there is an effective symplectic action of an (n-2)-dimensional torus T on a compact, connected symplectic 2n-dimensional manifold tha…
In this paper, we study the hard Lefschetz property of a symplectic manifold which admits a Hamiltonian torus action. More precisely, let $(M,ω)$ be a 6-dimensional compact symplectic manifold with a Hamiltonian $T^2$-action. We will show that if the moment map image of $M$ is a GKM-graph and if the graph is index-increasing, then $(M,ω)$ satisfies the hard Lefschetz property.
We show that every 4-dimensional torus with a linear symplectic form can be fully filled by one symplectic ball. If such a torus is not symplectomorphic to a product of 2-dimensional tori with equal sized factors, then it can also be fully filled by any finite collection of balls provided only that their total volume is less than that of the 4-torus with its given linear symplectic form.