A geometric obstruction, the so called "plastikstufe", for a contact structure to not being fillable has been found by K. Niederkruger. This generalizes somehow the concept of overtwisted structure to dimensions higher than 3. This paper elaborates on the theory showing a big number of closed contact manifolds with a "plastikstufe". They are the first examples of non-fillable contact closed high-dimensional manifolds. In particular we show that $S^3 \times \prod_j Σ_{j}$, for $g(Σ_j)\geq 2$, possesses this kind of contact structure and so any connected sum with those manifolds also does it.
We study the existence of positive loops of contactomorphisms on a Liouville-fillable contact manifold $(Σ,ξ=\ker(α))$. Previous results show that a large class of Liouville-fillable contact manifolds admit contractible positive loops. In contrast, we show that for any Liouville-fillable $(Σ,α)$ with $\dim(Σ) \geq 7$, there exists a Liouville-fillable contact structure $ξ'$ on $Σ$ which admits no positive loop at all. Further, $ξ'$ can be chosen to agree with $ξ$ on the complement of a Darboux ball.
In this short note, we exhibit an infinite family of hyperbolic rational homology $3$--spheres which do not admit any fillable contact structures. We also note that most of these manifolds do admit tight contact structures.
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.
In this paper, we find infinite hyperbolic 3-manifolds that admit no weakly symplectically fillable contact structures, using tools in Heegaard Floer theory. We also remark that part of these manifolds do admit tight contact structures.
We use contact handle decompositions and a stabilization process to compute the cylindrical contact homology of a subcritical Stein-fillable contact manifold with vanishing first Chern class, and show that it is completely determined by the homology of a subcritical Stein-filling of the contact manifold.
Recently Francisco Presas Mata constructed the first examples of closed contact manifolds of dimension larger than 3 that contain a plastikstufe, and hence are non-fillable. Using contact surgery on his examples we create on every sphere S^{2n-1}, n>1, an exotic contact structure ξ_- that also contains a plastikstufe. As a consequence, every closed contact manifold M (except S^1) can be converted into a contact manifold that is not (semi-positively) fillable by taking the connected sum of M with (S^{2n-1},ξ_-).
We make some elementary observations concerning subcritically Stein fillable contact structures on 5-manifolds. Specifically, we determine the diffeomorphism type of such contact manifolds in the case the fundamental group is finite cyclic, and we show that on the 5-sphere the standard contact structure is the unique subcritically fillable one. More generally, it is shown that subcritically fillable contact structures on simply connected 5-manifolds are determined by their underlying almost contact structure. Along the way, we discuss the homotopy classification of almost contact structures.
We introduce a new method to obstruct Liouville and weak fillability. Using this, we show that various rational homology 3-spheres admit strongly fillable contact structures without Liouville fillings, which extends the result of Ghiggini on a family of Brieskorn spheres. We also make partial progress on a conjecture of Ghiggini and Van-Horn-Morris.
We introduce the notion of asymptotically finitely generated contact structures, which states essentially that the Symplectic Homology in a certain degree of any filling of such contact manifolds is uniformly generated by only finitely many Reeb orbits. This property is used to generalize a famous result by Ustilovsky: We show that in a large class of manifolds (including all unit cotangent bundles and all Weinstein fillable contact manifolds with torsion first Chern class) each carries infinitely many exactly fillable contact structures. These are all different from the ones constructed recen…
We consider the question of when the operation of contact surgery with positive surgery coefficient, along a knot $K$ in a contact 3-manifold $Y$, gives rise to a weakly fillable contact structure. We show that this happens if and only if $Y$ itself is weakly fillable, and $K$ is isotopic to the boundary of a properly embedded symplectic disk inside a filling of $Y$. Moreover, if $Y'$ is a contact manifold arising from positive contact surgery along $K$, then any filling of $Y'$ is symplectomorphic to the complement of a suitable neighborhood of such a disk in a filling of $Y$. Using this resu…
We say that a contact manifold is Milnor fillable if it is contactomorphic to the contact boundary of an isolated complex-analytic singularity (X,x). Generalizing results of Milnor and Giroux, we associate to each holomorphic function f defined on X, with isolated singularity at x, an open book which supports the contact structure. Moreover, we prove that any 3-dimensional oriented manifold admits at most one Milnor fillable contact structure up to contactomorphism. * * * * * * * * In the first version of the paper, we showed that the open book associated to f carries the contact structure onl…
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 show that the canonical contact structure on the link of a normal complex singularity is universally tight. As a corollary we show the existence of closed, oriented, atoroidal 3-manifolds with infinite fundamental groups which carry universally tight contact structures that are not deformations of taut (or Reebless) foliations. This answers two questions of Etnyre.
We continue our study of contact structures on manifolds of dimension at least five using complex surgery theory. We show that in each dimension 2q+1 > 3 there are 'maximal' almost contact manifolds to which there is a Stein cobordism from any other (2q+1)-dimensional contact manifold. We show that the product M x S^2 admits a weakly fillable contact structure provided M admits a weak symplectic filling. We also study the connection between Stein fillability and connected sums: we give examples of almost contact manifolds for which the connected sum is Stein fillable, while the components are …
We prove that an infinite family of virtually overtwisted tight contact structures discovered by Honda on certain circle bundles over surfaces admit no symplectic semi-fillings. The argument uses results of Mrowka, Ozsvath and Yu on the translation-invariant solutions to the Seiberg-Witten equations on cylinders and the non-triviality of the Kronheimer-Mrowka monopole invariants of symplectic fillings.
A two-dimensional open book (S,h) determines a closed, oriented three-manifold Y(S,h) and a contact structure C(S,h) on Y(S,h). The contact structure C(S,h) is Stein fillable if h is positive, i.e. h can be written as a product of right-handed Dehn twists. Work of Wendl implies that when S has genus zero the converse statement holds, that is if C(S,h) is Stein fillable then h is positive. On the other hand, results by Wand and by Baker, Etnyre and Van Horn-Morris imply the existence of counterexamples to the converse statement with S of arbitrary genus strictly greater than one. The main purpo…
This thesis considers fillable contact structures on odd-dimensional manifolds. For that purpose, Rabinowitz-Floer homology (RFH) is used which was introduced by Cieliebak and Frauenfelder in 2009. A major part of the thesis is devoted to technical problems in the definition of RFH. In particular, it is shown that the moduli spaces involved are cut out transversally. Moreover, it is proved that RFH is essentially invariant under subcritical handle attachment. Finally, RFH is calculated for some Brieskorn manifolds. The obtained results are then used to show for every manifold, which supports f…
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…
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…
Tight contact structures without symplectic fillings are everywhere
Leibniz Universität Hannover（汉诺威莱布尼茨大学）；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）；Heidelberg Universität（海德堡大学）
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.
In this note we make several observations concerning symplectic fillings. In particular we show that a (strongly or weakly) semi-fillable contact structure is fillable and any filling embeds as a symplectic domain in a closed symplectic manifold. We also relate properties of the open book decomposition of a contact manifold to its possible fillings. These results are also useful in proving property P for knots [P Kronheimer and T Mrowka, Geometry and Topology, 8 (2004) 295-310, math.GT/0311489] and in showing the contact Heegaard Floer invariant of a fillable contact structure does not vanish …
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 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…
For any integer $n\geq 2$, we construct an infinite family of Stein fillable contact $(4n-1)$-manifolds each of which admits infinitely many pairwise homotopy inequivalent Stein fillings.
We construct a family of Stein fillable contact homology 3-spheres such that each contact structure of the family is supported by an open book with planar page, and a Stein filling of the contact manifold is of Mazur type.
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…
In this article we present infinitely many 3-manifolds admitting infinitely many universally tight contact structures each with trivial Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariants. By known properties of these invariants the contact structures constructed here are non weakly symplectically fillable.
In this note we observe that one can contact embed all contact 3-manifolds into a Stein fillable contact structure on the twisted $S^3$-bundle over $S^2$ and also into a unique overtwisted contact structure on $S^3\times S^2$. These results are proven using "spun embeddings" and Lefschetz fibrations.
Extending work of Chen, we prove the Weinstein conjecture in dimension three for strongly fillable contact structures with either non-vanishing first Chern class or with strong and exact filling having non-trivial canonical bundle. This implies the Weinstein conjecture for certain Stein fillable contact structures obtained by the Eliashberg-Gompf construction.For example we prove the Weinstein conjecture for the Brieskorn homology spheres $Σ(2,3,6n-1)$, $n\geq2$, oriented as the boundary of the corresponding Milnor fibre. Furthermore, for tight contact structures on odd lens spaces, non-contra…
We construct four-dimensional symplectic cobordisms between contact three-manifolds generalizing an example of Eliashberg. One key feature is that any handlebody decomposition of one of these cobordisms must involve three-handles. The other key feature is that these cobordisms contain chains of symplectically embedded two-spheres of square zero. This, together with standard gauge theory, is used to show that any contact three-manifold of non-zero torsion (in the sense of Giroux) cannot be strongly symplectically fillable. John Etnyre pointed out to the author that the same argument together wi…
Let X be a 4-manifold with contact boundary. We prove that the monopole invariants of X introduced by Kronheimer and Mrowka vanish under the following assumptions: (i) a connected component of the boundary of X carries a metric with positive scalar curvature and (ii) either b_2^+(X)>0 or the boundary of X is disconnected. As an application we show that the Poincare homology 3-sphere, oriented as the boundary of the positive E_8 plumbing, does not carry symplectically semi-fillable contact structures. This proves, in particular, a conjecture of Gompf, and provides the first example of a 3-manif…
Given a contact structure on a closed, oriented three-manifold $Y$, we describe an invariant which takes values in the three-manifold's Floer homology $\HFa$. This invariant vanishes for overtwisted contact structures and is non-zero for Stein fillable ones. The construction uses of Giroux's interpretation of contact structures in terms of open book decompositions, and the knot Floer homologies introduced in math.GT/0209056.
We introduce the Kodaira dimension of contact 3-manifolds and establish some basic properties. In particular, contact 3-manifolds with distinct Kodaria dimensions behave differently when it comes to the geography of various kinds of fillings. On the other hand, we also prove that, given any contact 3-manifold, there is a lower bound of $2χ+3σ$ for all its minimal symplectic fillings. This is motivated by the bound of Stipsicz for Stein fillings. Finally, we discuss various aspects of exact self cobordisms of fillable 3-manifolds.
This is a survey on contact open books and contact Dehn surgery. The relation between these two concepts is discussed, and various applications are sketched, e.g. the monodromy of Stein fillable contact 3-manifolds, the Giroux-Goodman proof of Harer's conjecture on fibred links, construction of symplectic caps to fillings (Eliashberg, Etnyre), and detection of non-loose Legendrian knots with the help of contact surgery.
This short paper gives a constraint on Chern classes of closed strictly pseudoconvex CR manifolds (or equivalently, closed holomorphically fillable contact manifolds) of dimension at least five. We also see that our result is ''optimal'' through some examples.
In this paper, we focus on contact structures supported by planar open book decompositions. We study right-veering diffeomorphisms to keep track of overtwistedness property of contact structures under some monodromy changes. As an application we give infinitely many examples of overtwisted contact structures supported by open books whose pages are the four-punctured sphere, and also we prove that a certain family is holomorphically fillable using lantern relation.
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.
There is an intrinsic notion of what it means for a contact manifold to be the smooth boundary of a Stein manifold. The same concept has another more extrinsic formulation, which is often used as a convenient working hypothesis. We give a simple proof that the two are equivalent. Moreover it is shown that, even though a border always exists, it's germ is not unique; nevertheless the germ of the Dolbeault cohomology of any border is unique. We also point out that any Stein fillable compact contact 3- manifold has a geometric realization in C^4 via an embedding, or in C^3 via an immersion.
Using contact surgery we define families of contact structures on certain Seifert fibered three-manifolds. We prove that all these contact structures are tight using contact Ozsath-Szabo invariants. We use these examples to show that, given a natural number n, there exists a Seifert fibered three-manifold carrying at least n pairwise non-isomorphic tight, not fillable contact structures.
Two of the basic questions in contact topology are which manifolds admit tight contact structures, and on those that do, can we classify such structures. We present the first such classification on an infinite family of (mostly) hyperbolic 3-manifolds: surgeries on the figure-eight knot. We also determine which of the tight contact structures are symplectically fillable and which are universally tight.
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…
Using the relation between Khovanov homology and the Heegaard Floer homology of branched double covers, we show how Khovanov homology can be used to establish tightness of branched double covers of certain transverse knots. We give examples of several infinite families of knots whose branched covers are tight for Khovanov-homological reasons, and show that some of these branched covers are not Stein fillable.
We characterize the closed, oriented, Seifert fibered 3-manifolds which are oriented boundaries of Stein manifolds. We also show that for this class of 3-manifolds the existence of Stein fillings is equivalent to the existence of symplectic fillings.
An odd-dimensional differentiable manifold is called \emph{holomorphically fillable} if it is diffeomorphic to the boundary of a compact strongly pseudoconvex complex manifold, \emph{Stein fillable} if this last manifold may be chosen to be Stein and \emph{Milnor fillable} if it is diffeomorphic to the abstract boundary of an isolated singularity of normal complex analytic space. We show that the homotopical dimension of a manifold-with-boundary of dimension at least 4 restricts the cohomology ring (with any coefficients) of its boundary. This gives restrictions on the cohomology rings of Stei…
We prove, in a geometric way, that the standard contact structure on the real projective space of dimension $2n-1$ is not Liouville fillable for $n \ge 3$ and odd. We also prove that, for all $n$, semipositive fillings of those contact structures are simply connected. Finally we give yet another proof of the Eliashberg-Floer-McDuff theorem on the diffeomorphism type of the symplectically aspherical fillings of the standard contact structure on the $(2n-1)$-dimensional sphere.
