We extend the theorems concerning the equivariant symplectic reduction of the cotangent bundle to contact geometry. The role of the cotangent bundle is taken by the cosphere bundle. We use Albert's method for reduction at zero and Willett's method for non-zero reduction. We provide examples for both cases.
We prove that every non-degenerate Reeb flow on a closed contact manifold $M$ admitting a strong symplectic filling $W$ with vanishing first Chern class carries at least two geometrically distinct closed orbits provided that the positive equivariant symplectic homology of $W$ satisfies a mild condition. Under further assumptions, we establish the existence of two geometrically distinct closed orbits on any contact finite quotient of $M$. Several examples of such contact manifolds are provided, like displaceable ones, unit cosphere bundles, prequantization circle bundles, Brieskorn spheres and …
We define contact fiber bundles and investigate conditions for the existence of contact structures on the total space of such a bundle. The results are analogous to minimal coupling in symplectic geometry. The two applications are construction of K-contact manifolds generalizing Yamazaki's fiber join construction and a cross-section theorem for contact moment maps
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 this paper, we compute contact homology of some quasi-regular contact structures, which admit Hamiltonian actions of Reeb type of Lie groups. We will discuss the toric contact case, (where the torus is of Reeb type), and the case of homogeneous contact manifolds. In both of these cases the quotients by the Reeb action are Kähler and admit perfect Morse-Bott functions via the moment map. It turns out that the contact homology depends only on the homology of the symplectic base and the bundle data of the contact manifolds as a circle bundle over the base. Moreover we can identify the relevant…
We study the contact equivalence problem for toric contact structures on $S^3$-bundles over $S^2$. That is, given two toric contact structures, one can ask the question: when are they equivalent as contact structures while inequivalent as toric contact structures? In general this appears to be a difficult problem. To find inequivalent toric contact structures that are contact equivalent, we show that the corresponding 3-tori belong to distinct conjugacy classes in the contactomorphism group. To show that two toric contact structures with the same first Chern class are contact inequivalent, we …
A Jacobi structure $J$ on a line bundle $L\to M$ is weakly regular if the sharp map $J^\sharp : J^1 L \to DL$ has constant rank. A generalized contact bundle with regular Jacobi structure possess a transverse complex structure. Paralleling the work of Bailey in generalized complex geometry, we find condition on a pair consisting of a regular Jacobi structure and an transverse complex structure to come from a generalized contact structure. In this way we are able to construct interesting examples of generalized contact bundles. As applications: 1) we prove that every 5-dimensional nilmanifold i…
Generalized contact bundles are odd dimensional analogues of generalized complex manifolds. They have been introduced recently and very little is known about them. In this paper we study their local structure. Specifically, we prove a local splitting theorem similar to those appearing in Poisson geometry. In particular, in a neighborhood of a regular point, a generalized contact bundle is either the product of a contact and a complex manifold or the product of a symplectic manifold and a manifold equipped with an integrable complex structure on the gauge algebroid of the trivial line bundle.
Let $Y$ be a compact, oriented 3-manifold with a contact form $a$ and a metric $ds^2$. Suppose that $F\to Y$ is a principal bundle with structure group $U(2) = SU(2)\times_{\pm1}S^1$ such that $F/S^1$ is the principal SO(3) bundle of orthonormal frames for $TY$. A unitary connection $A_0$ on the Hermitian line bundle $F\times_{\det U(2)}\mathbb{C}$ determines a self-adjoint Dirac operator $D_0$ on the $\mathbb{C}^2$-bundle $F\times_{U(2)}\mathbb{C}^2$. The contact form $a$ can be used to perturb the connection $A_0$ by $A_0-ira$. This associates a one parameter family of Dirac operators $D_r$ …
In this Note, we propose a line bundle approach to odd-dimensional analogues of generalized complex structures. This new approach has three main advantages: (1) it encompasses all existing ones; (2) it elucidates the geometric meaning of the integrability condition for generalized contact structures; (3) in light of new results on multiplicative forms and Spencer operators, it allows a simple interpretation of the defining equations of a generalized contact structure in terms of Lie algebroids and Lie groupoids.
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.
We propose a novel approach to contact Hamiltonian mechanics which, in contrast to the one dominating in the literature, serves also for non-trivial contact structures. In this approach Hamiltonians are no longer functions on the contact manifold M itself but sections of a line bundle over M or, equivalently, 1-homogeneous functions on a certain GL(1,R)-principal bundle P\to M which is equipped with a homogeneous symplectic form ω. In other words, our understanding of contact geometry is that it is not an `odd-dimensional cousin' of symplectic geometry but rather a part of the latter, namely `…
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…
We establish multiplicity results for geometrically distinct contractible closed Reeb orbits of non-degenerate contact forms on a broad class of prequantization bundles. The results hold under certain index requirements on the contact form and are sharp for unit cotangent bundles of CROSS's. In particular, we generalize and put in the symplectic-topological context a theorem of Duan, Liu, Long, and Wang for the standard contact sphere. We also prove similar results for non-hyperbolic contractible closed orbits and briefly touch upon the multiplicity problem for degenerate forms. On the combina…
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 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.
We consider a large family F of torus bundles over the circle, and we use recent work of Li--Mak to construct, on each Y in F, a Stein fillable contact structure C. We prove that (i) each Stein filling of (Y,C) has vanishing first Chern class and first Betti number, (ii) if Y in F is elliptic then all Stein fillings of (Y,C) are pairwise diffeomorphic and (iii) if Y in F is parabolic or hyperbolic then all Stein fillings of (Y,C) share the same Betti numbers and fall into finitely many diffeomorphism classes. Moreover, for infinitely many hyperbolic torus bundles Y in F we exhibit non-homotopy…
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 present an approach to Jacobi and contact geometry that makes many facts, presented in the literature in an overcomplicated way, much more natural and clear. The key concepts are Kirillov manifolds and linear Kirillov structures, i.e., homogeneous Poisson manifolds and, respectively, homogeneous linear Poisson manifolds. The difference with the existing literature is that the homogeneity of the Poisson structure is related to a principal ${\rm GL}(1,{\mathbb R})$-bundle structure on the manifold and not just to a vector field. This allows for working with Jacobi bundle structures on nontriv…
The purpose of this paper is to study the Sasakian geometry on odd dimensional sphere bundles over a smooth projective algebraic variety $N$ with the ultimate, but probably unachievable goal of understanding the existence and non-existence of extremal and constant scalar curvature Sasaki metrics. We apply the fiber join construction of Yamazaki \cite{Yam99} for K-contact manifolds to the Sasaki case. This construction depends on the choice of $d+1$ integral Kähler classes $[ω_j]$ on $N$ that are not necessarily colinear in the Kähler cone. We show that the colinear case is equivalent to a subc…
We consider Courant and Courant-Jacobi brackets on the stable tangent bundle $TM\times\mathds{R}^h$ of a differentiable manifold and corresponding Dirac, Dirac-Jacobi and generalized complex structures. We prove that Dirac and Dirac-Jacobi structures on $TM\times\mathds{R}^h$ can be prolonged to $TM\times\mathds{R}^k$, $k>h$, by means of commuting infinitesimal automorphisms. Some of the stable, generalized, complex structures are a natural generalization of the normal, almost contact structures; they are expressible by a system of tensors $(P,θ,F,Z_a,ξ^a)$ $(a=1,...,h)$, where $P$ is a bivect…
We summarize recent work on a combinatorial knot invariant called knot contact homology. We also discuss the origins of this invariant in symplectic topology, via holomorphic curves and a conormal bundle naturally associated to the knot.
In this paper we study the Sasakian geometry on S^3-bundles over a Riemann surface of genus g>0 with emphasis on extremal Sasaki metrics. We prove the existence of a countably infinite number of inequivalent contact structures on the total space of such bundles that admit 2-dimensional Sasaki cones each with a Sasaki metric of constant scalar curvature (CSC). This CSC Sasaki metric is most often irregular. We further study the extremal subset in the Sasaki cone showing that if 0<g<5 it exhausts the entire cone. Examples are given where exhaustion fails.
We prove a contact non-squeezing result for a class of embeddings between starshaped domains in the contactization of the symplectization of the unit cotangent bundle of certain manifolds. The class of embeddings includes embeddings which are not isotopic to the identity. This yields a new proof that there is no positive loop of contactomorphisms in the unit cotangent bundles under consideration. The proof uses the shape invariant introduced by Sikorav and Eliashberg.
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…
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…
In 1998, Gompf described a Stein domain structure on the disk cotangent bundle of any closed surface S, by a Legendrian handlebody diagram. We prove that Gompf's Stein domain is symplectomorphic to the disk cotangent bundle equipped with its canonical symplectic structure and the boundary of this domain is contactomorphic to the unit cotangent bundle of S equipped with its canonical contact structure. As a corollary, we obtain a surgery diagram for the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of S.
Contact action functional, calculus of variation and canonical generating function of Legendrian submanifolds
Center for Geometry and Physics, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)(基础科学研究所几何物理中心);POSTECH(浦项科技大学);CNRS, Laboratoire de Mathématiques Jean Leray, Nantes Université(法国国家科学研究中心让·勒雷数学实验室南特大学)
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…
The first goal of this paper is to construct examples of higher dimensional contact manifolds with specific properties. Our main results in this direction are the existence of tight virtually overtwisted closed contact manifolds in all dimensions and the fact that every closed contact 3-manifold, which is not (smoothly) a rational homology sphere, contact--embeds with trivial normal bundle inside a hypertight closed contact 5-manifold. This uses known construction procedures by Bourgeois (on products with tori) and Geiges (on branched covering spaces). We pass from these procedures to definiti…
We investigate leaf-wise intersection points on hypersurfaces of contact type in monotone symplectic manifolds. We show that monotone Floer-essential Lagrangians detect periodic leaf-wise intersection points in hypersurfaces of contact type whose Reeb flow is Zoll. Examples include the prequantization bundles appearing in monotone toric negative line bundles. Generalizing, we prove the existence of leaf-wise intersection points for certain annulus subbundles in weak+-monotone negative line bundles, not necessarily toric. The proofs combine reduced symplectic cohomology with the original method…
We study Reeb dynamics on prequantization circle bundles and the filtered (equivariant) symplectic homology of prequantization line bundles, aka negative line bundles, with symplectically aspherical base. We define (equivariant) symplectic capacities, obtain an upper bound on their growth, prove uniform instability of the filtered symplectic homology and touch upon the question of stable displacement. We also introduce a new algebraic structure on the positive (equivariant) symplectic homology capturing the free homotopy class of a closed Reeb orbit -- the linking number filtration -- and use …
We examine open books with powers of fibered Dehn twists as monodromy. The resulting contact manifolds can be thought of as Boothby-Wang orbibundles over symplectic orbifolds. Using the mean Euler characteristic of equivariant symplectic homology we can distinguish these contact manifolds and hence show that some fibered Dehn twists are not symplectically isotopic to the identity relative to the boundary. This complements results of Biran and Giroux.
In this article I propose a new method for reducing a co-oriented contact manifold M equipped with an action of a Lie group G by contact transformations. With a certain regularity and integrality assumption the contact quotient $M_μ$ at $μ\in \fg^*$ is a naturally a co-oriented contact orbifold which is independent of the contact form used to represent the given contact structure. Removing the regularity and integrality assumptions and replacing them with one concerning the existence of a slice, which is satisfied for compact symmetry groups, results in a contact stratified space; i.e, a strat…
We provide a $C^0$ counterexample to the Lagrangian Arnold conjecture in the cotangent bundle of a closed manifold. Additionally, we prove a quantitative $h$-principle for subcritical isotropic embeddings in contact manifolds, and provide an explicit construction of a contact homeomorphism which takes a subcritical isotropic curve to a transverse one. On the rigid side, we give another proof of the Dimitroglou Rizell and Sullivan theorem \cite{RS22} which states that Legendrian knots are preserved by contact homeomorphisms, provided their image is smooth. Moreover, our method gives related exa…
We extend the construction of the BFV-complex of a coisotropic submanifold from the Poisson setting to the Jacobi setting. In particular, our construction applies in the contact and l.c.s. settings. The BFV-complex of a coisotropic submanifold $S$ controls the coisotropic deformation problem of $S$ under both Hamiltonian and Jacobi equivalence.
We prove that any minimal weak symplectic filling of the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of a nonorientable closed surface other than the real projective plane is s-cobordant rel boundary to the disk cotangent bundle of the surface. If the nonorientable surface is the Klein bottle, then we show that the minimal weak symplectic filling is unique up to homeomorphism.
The conormal Lagrangian $L_K$ of a knot $K$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$ is the submanifold of the cotangent bundle $T^* \mathbb{R}^3$ consisting of covectors along $K$ that annihilate tangent vectors to $K$. By intersecting with the unit cotangent bundle $S^* \mathbb{R}^3$, one obtains the unit conormal $Λ_K$, and the Legendrian contact homology of $Λ_K$ is a knot invariant of $K$, known as knot contact homology. We define a version of string topology for strings in $\mathbb{R}^3 \cup L_K$ and prove that this is isomorphic in degree 0 to knot contact homology. The string topology perspective gives a top…
We describe a Lefschetz fibration of genus one on the disk cotangent bundle of any closed orientable surface S. As a corollary, we obtain an explicit genus one open book decomposition adapted to the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of S.
We introduce symplectic Calabi-Yau caps to obtain new obstructions to exact fillings. In particular, it implies that any exact filling of the standard unit cotangent bundle of a hyperbolic surface has vanishing first Chern class and has the same integral homology and intersection form as its disk cotangent bundle. This gives evidence to a conjecture that all of its exact fillings are diffeomorphic to the disk cotangent bundle. As a result, we also obtain the first infinitely family of Stein fillable contact 3-manifolds with uniform bounds on the Betti numbers of its exact fillings but admittin…
We show that the Hamiltonian action satisfies the Palais-Smale condition over a "mixed regularity" space of loops in cotangent bundles, namely the space of loops with regularity $H^s$, $s\in (\frac 12, 1)$, in the base and $H^{1-s}$ in the fiber direction. As an application, we give a simplified proof of a theorem of Hofer-Viterbo on the existence of closed characteristic leaves for certain contact type hypersufaces in cotangent bundles.