We continue the study of linear families of contact forms on 3-manifolds begun in our paper `Contact geometry and complex surfaces'. The present paper introduces Teichmuller and moduli spaces for so-called taut contact circles. By constructing a developing map for taut contact circles, we show that these geometrically defined deformation spaces are equivalent to certain spaces of representations of the fundamental group in appropriate Lie groups. Furthermore, we relate these deformation spaces to `classical' Teichmuller theory of Riemann surfaces and orbifolds.
We describe a necessary and sufficient condition for a principal circle bundle over an even-dimensional manifold to carry an invariant contact structure. As a corollary it is shown that all circle bundles over a given base manifold carry an invariant contact structure, only provided the trivial bundle does. In particular, all circle bundles over 4-manifolds admit invariant contact structures. We also discuss the Bourgeois construction of contact structures on odd-dimensional tori in this context, and we relate our results to recent work of Massot, Niederkrueger and Wendl on weak symplectic fil…
In a recent preprint Yael Karshon showed that there exist non-conjugate tori in a group of symplectomorphisms of a Hirzebruch surface. She counted them in terms of the cohomology class of the symplectic structure. We show that a similar phenomenon exists in the contactomorphism groups of pre-quantum circle bundles over Hirzebruch surfaces. Note that the contact structures in question are fillable. This may be contrasted with an earlier paper where we showed that there are infinitely many non-conjugate tori in the contactomorphism groups of certain overtwisted lens spaces (Contact cuts, Israel …
This article is based on a talk at the RIEMain in Contact conference in Cagliari, Italy in honor of the 78th birthday of David Blair one of the founders of modern Riemannian contact geometry. The present article is a survey of a special type of Riemannian contact structure known as Sasakian geometry. An ultimate goal of this survey is to understand the moduli of classes of Sasakian structures as well as the moduli of extremal and constant scalar curvature Sasaki metrics, and in particular the moduli of Sasaki-Einstein metrics.
Motivated by the moduli theory of taut contact circles on spherical 3-manifolds, we relate taut contact circles to transversely holomorphic flows. We give an elementary survey of such 1-dimensional foliations from a topological viewpoint. We describe a complex analogue of the classical Godbillon-Vey invariant, the so-called Bott invariant, and a logarithmic monodromy of closed leaves. The Bott invariant allows us to formulate a generalised Gauß-Bonnet theorem. We compute these invariants for the Poincaré foliations on the 3-sphere and derive rigidity statements, including a uniformisation theo…
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.
Given any smooth fibration of the unit 3-sphere by great circles, we show that the distribution of 2-planes orthogonal to the great circle fibres is a tight contact structure, a fact well known in the special case of the Hopf fibrations. The proof expresses hypothesis and conclusion as differential inequalities involving functions on disks transverse to the fibres, and shows that one inequality implies the other.
In this paper, we determine the group of contact transformations modulo contact isotopies for Legendrian circle bundles over closed surfaces of nonpositive Euler characteristic. These results extend and correct those presented by the first author in a former work. The main ingredient we use is connectedness of certain spaces of embeddings of surfaces into contact 3-manifolds. In the third section, this connectedness question is studied in more details with a number of (hopefully instructive) examples.
We define symplectic fractional twists, which generalize Dehn twists, and use these in open books to investigate contact structures. The resulting contact structures are invariant under a circle action, and share several similarities with the invariant contact structures that were studied by Lutz and Giroux. We show that left-handed fractional twists often give rise to non-fillable contact manifolds. These manifolds are in fact "algebraically overtwisted", yet they do not seem to contain bLobs, nor are they directly related to negative stabilizations. We also show that the Weinstein conjecture…
We construct the moduli space of contact instantons, an analogue of Yang-Mills instantons defined for contact metric $5$-manifolds and initiate the study of their structure. In the $K$-contact case we give sufficient conditions for smoothness of the moduli space away from reducible connections and show the dimension is given by the index of an operator elliptic transverse to the Reeb foliation. The moduli spaces are shown to be Kähler when the $5$-manifold $M$ is Sasakian and hyperKähler when $M$ is transverse Calabi-Yau. We show how the transverse index can be computed in various cases, in pa…
A taut contact sphere on a 3-manifold is a linear 2-sphere of contact forms, all defining the same volume form. In the present paper we completely determine the moduli of taut contact spheres on compact left-quotients of SU(2) (the only closed manifolds admitting such structures). We also show that the moduli space of taut contact spheres embeds into the moduli space of taut contact circles. This moduli problem leads to a new viewpoint on the Gibbons-Hawking ansatz in hyperkahler geometry. The classification of taut contact spheres on closed 3-manifolds includes the known classification of 3-S…
Two constructions of contact manifolds are presented: (i) products of S^1 with manifolds admitting a suitable decomposition into two exact symplectic pieces and (ii) fibre connected sums along isotropic circles. Baykur has found a decomposition as required for (i) for all closed, oriented 4-manifolds. As a corollary, we can show that all closed, oriented 5-manifolds that are Cartesian products of lower-dimensional manifolds carry a contact structure. For symplectic 4-manifolds we exhibit an alternative construction of such a decomposition; this gives us control over the homotopy type of the co…
We study the symplectic nature of the moduli stack classifying dormant curves over a field $K$ of positive characteristic, i.e., proper hyperbolic curves over $K$ equipped with a dormant indigenous bundle. The central objects of the present paper are the following two Deligne-Mumford stacks. One is the cotangent bundle ${^\circledcirc T^{\vee ^\mathrm{Zzz...}}_{g,K}}$ of the moduli stack ${^\circledcirc \mathfrak{M}^{^\mathrm{Zzz...}}_{g,K}}$ classifying ordinary dormant curves over $K$ of genus $g$. The other is the moduli stack ${^\circledcirc \mathfrak{S}^{^\mathrm{Zzz...}}_{g,K}}$ classify…
We introduce cosymplectic circles and cosymplectic spheres, which are the analogues in the cosymplectic setting of contact circles and contact spheres. We provide a complete classification of compact 3-manifolds that admit a cosymplectic circle. The properties of tautness and roundness for a cosymplectic $p$-sphere are studied. To any taut cosymplectic circle on a three-dimensional manifold $M$ we are able to canonically associate a complex structure and a conformal symplectic couple on $M \times \mathbb{R}$. We prove that a cosymplectic circle in dimension three is round if and only if it is …
Unlike Legendrian submanifolds, the deformation problem of coisotropic submanifolds can be obstructed. Starting from this observation, we single out in the contact setting the special class of integral coisotropic submanifolds as the direct generalization of Legendrian submanifolds for what concerns deformation and moduli theory. Indeed, being integral coisotropic is proved to be a rigid condition, and moreover the integral coisotropic deformation problem is unobstructed with discrete moduli space.
Let E be a circle bundle over a Riemann surface that supports a contact structure transverse to the fibers. This paper presents a combinatorial definition of a differential graded algebra (DGA) that is an invariant of Legendrian knots in E. The invariant generalizes Chekanov's combinatorial DGA invariant of Legendrian knots in the standard contact 3-space using ideas from Eliashberg, Givental, and Hofer's contact homology. The main difficulty lies in dealing with what are ostensibly 1-parameter families of generators for the DGA; these are solved using ``Morse-Bott'' techniques. As an applicat…
We develop the gluing theory of contact instantons in the context of open strings and in the context of closed strings \emph{with vanishing charge}, for example in the symplectization context. This is one of the key ingredients for the study of (virtually) smooth moduli space of (bordered) contact instantons needed for the construction of contact instanton Floer cohomology and more generally for the construction of Fukaya-type category of Legendrian submanifolds in contact manifold $(M,ξ)$. As an application, we apply the gluing theorem to give the construction of (cylindrical) Legendrian cont…
We define Floer homology for a time-independent, or autonomous Hamiltonian on a symplectic manifold with contact type boundary, under the assumption that its 1-periodic orbits are transversally nondegenerate. Our construction is based on Morse-Bott techniques for Floer trajectories. Our main motivation is to understand the relationship between linearized contact homology of a fillable contact manifold and symplectic homology of its filling.
Let $F$ be a genus $g$ curve and $σ: F \to F$ a real structure with the maximal possible number of fixed circles. We study the real moduli space $\N' = \Fix (σ^{#})$ where $σ^{#}: \N \to \N$ is the induced real structure on the moduli space $\N$ of stable holomorphic bundles of rank 2 over $F$ with fixed non-trivial determinant. In particular, we calculate $H^* (\N',\mathbb Z)$ in the case of $g = 2$, generalizing Thaddeus' approach to computing $H^* (\N,\mathbb Z)$.
In this paper we propose a theory of contact invariants and open string invariants, which are generalizations of the relative invariants. We introduce two moduli spaces $\bar{\mathcal{M}}_{A}(M^{+},C,g,m+ν,{\bf y},{\bf p},(\mathbf{k},\mathfrak{e}))$ and $\bar{\mathcal{M}}_{A}(M,L;g,m+ν,{\bf y},{\bf p},\overrightarrowμ)$, prove the compactness of the moduli spaces and the existence of the invariants.
We introduce a global Cauchy-Riemann($CR$)-invariant and discuss its behavior on the moduli space of $CR$-structures. We argue that this study is related to the Smale conjecture in 3-topology and the problem of counting complex structures. Furthermore, we propose a contact-analogue of Ray-Singer's analytic torsion. This ``contact torsion'' is expected to be able to distinguish among ``contact lens'' spaces. We also propose the study of a certain kind of monopole equation associated with a contact structure.
We study a class of Legendrian surfaces in contact five-folds by encoding their wavefronts via planar combinatorial structures. We refer to these surfaces as Legendrian weaves, and to the combinatorial objects as N-graphs. First, we develop a diagrammatic calculus which encodes contact geometric operations on Legendrian surfaces as multi-colored planar combinatorics. Second, we present an algebraic-geometric characterization for the moduli space of microlocal constructible sheaves associated to these Legendrian surfaces. Then we use these N-graphs and the flag moduli description of these Legen…
Branched covers of orbit cylinders are the basic examples of holomorphic curves studied in symplectic field theory. Since all curves with Fredholm index one can never be regular for any choice of cylindrical almost complex structure, we generalize the obstruction bundle technique of Taubes for determining multiple cover contributions from Gromov-Witten theory to the case of moduli spaces with boundary. Our result proves that the differential in rational symplectic field theory and contact homology is strictly decreasing with respect to the natural action filtration.
The moduli space of stable bundles of rank 2 and degree 1 on a Riemann surface has rational cohomology generated by the so-called universal classes. The work of Baranovsky, King-Newstead, Siebert-Tian and Zagier provided a complete set of relations between these classes, expressed in terms of a recursion in the genus. This paper accomplishes the same thing for the non-compact moduli spaces of Higgs bundles, in the sense of Hitchin and Simpson. There are many more independent relations than for stable bundles, but in a sense the answer is simpler, since the formulas are completely explicit, not…
In this paper we study pseudoholomorphic curves with brake symmetry in symplectization of a closed contact manifold. We introduce the pseudoholomorphic curve with brake symmetry and the corresponding moduli space. Then we get the virtual dimension of the moduli space.
Let $(X,ω)$ be a compact symplectic manifold with a Hamiltonian action of a compact Lie group $G$ and $μ: X\to \mathfrak g$ be its moment map. In this paper, we study the $L^2$-moduli spaces of symplectic vortices on Riemann surfaces with cylindrical ends. We studied a circle-valued action functional whose gradient flow equation corresponds to the symplectic vortex equations on a cylinder $S^1\times \mathbb R$. Assume that $0$ is a regular value of the moment map $μ$, we show that the functional is of Bott-Morse type and its critical points of the functional form twisted sectors of the symplec…
We present an elementary computational scheme for the moduli spaces of rational pseudo-holomorphic curves in the symplectizations of 3-dimensional lens spaces, which are equipped with Morse-Bott contact forms induced by the standard Morse-Bott contact form on $S^3$. As an application, we prove that for $p$ prime and $1<q,q'<p-1$, if there is a contactomorphism between lens spaces $L(p,q)$ and $L(p,q')$, where both spaces are equipped with their standard contact structures, then $q\equiv (q')^{\pm 1}$ in$\mod p$. For the proof we study the moduli spaces of pair of pants with two non-contractibl…
A theorem of Moser guarantees that every diffeomorphism of a closed manifold can be isotoped to a volume preserving one. We show that this statement cannot be extended into contact category: some connected components of contactomorphism groups of certain contact manifolds contain no volume-preserving diffeomorphisms. This phenomenon can be considered from different viewpoints: geometric (isometric action of the contact mapping class group on the moduli space of contact forms), topological (action in symplectic homology) and dynamical (diffusion). We define a numerical invariant - a kind of con…
This paper computes the quantization of the moduli space of flat SO(3)-bundles over an oriented surface with boundary, with prescribed holonomies around the boundary circles. The result agrees with the generalized Verlinde formula conjectured by Fuchs and Schweigert.
We reconsider Chern-Simons gauge theory on a Seifert manifold M, which is the total space of a nontrivial circle bundle over a Riemann surface, possibly with orbifold points. As shown in previous work with Witten, the path integral technique of non-abelian localization can be used to express the partition function of Chern-Simons theory in terms of the equivariant cohomology of the moduli space of flat connections on M. Here we extend this result to apply to the expectation values of Wilson loop operators which wrap the circle fibers of M. Under localization, such a Wilson loop operator reduce…
