Weak and strong fillability of higher dimensional contact manifolds

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-dimensional analogue of Giroux torsion, which we define via the existence in all dimensions of exact symplectic manifolds with disconnected contact boundary.Comment: 68 pages, 5 figures. v2: Some attributions clarified, and other minor edits. v3: exposition improved using referee's comments. Published by Invent. Mat

Oka manifolds: From Oka to Stein and back

Oka theory has its roots in the classical Oka-Grauert principle whose main result is Grauert's classification of principal holomorphic fiber bundles over Stein spaces. Modern Oka theory concerns holomorphic maps from Stein manifolds and Stein spaces to Oka manifolds. It has emerged as a subfield of complex geometry in its own right since the appearance of a seminal paper of M. Gromov in 1989. In this expository paper we discuss Oka manifolds and Oka maps. We describe equivalent characterizations of Oka manifolds, the functorial properties of this class, and geometric sufficient conditions for being Oka, the most important of which is Gromov's ellipticity. We survey the current status of the theory in terms of known examples of Oka manifolds, mention open problems and outline the proofs of the main results. In the appendix by F. Larusson it is explained how Oka manifolds and Oka maps, along with Stein manifolds, fit into an abstract homotopy-theoretic framework. The article is an expanded version of the lectures given by the author at the Winter School KAWA-4 in Toulouse, France, in January 2013. A more comprehensive exposition of Oka theory is available in the monograph F. Forstneric, Stein Manifolds and Holomorphic Mappings (The Homotopy Principle in Complex Analysis), Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete, 3. Folge, 56, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg (2011).Comment: With an appendix by Finnur Larusson. To appear in Ann. Fac. Sci. Toulouse Math. (6), vol. 22, no. 4. This version is identical with the published tex

Convergence of the solutions of the discounted equation

We consider a continuous coercive Hamiltonian $H$ on the cotangent bundle of the compact connected manifold $M$ which is convex in the momentum. If $u_\lambda:M\to\mathbb R$ is the viscosity solution of the discounted equation $$\lambda u_\lambda(x)+H(x,d_x u_\lambda)=c(H),$$ where $c(H)$ is the critical value, we prove that $u_\lambda$ converges uniformly, as $\lambda\to 0$, to a specific solution $u_0:M\to\mathbb R$ of the critical equation $$H(x,d_x u)=c(H).$$ We characterize $u_0$ in terms of Peierls barrier and projected Mather measures.Comment: 35 page

Runge approximation on convex sets implies the Oka property

We prove that the classical Oka property of a complex manifold Y, concerning the existence and homotopy classification of holomorphic mappings from Stein manifolds to Y, is equivalent to a Runge approximation property for holomorphic maps from compact convex sets in Euclidean spaces to Y.Comment: To appear in the Annals of Mat

Geometric Group Theory, Hyperbolic Dynamics and Symplectic Geometry

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