Braids and symplectic four-manifolds with abelian fundamental group

We explain how a version of Floer homology can be used as an invariant of symplectic manifolds with $b_1>0$. As a concrete example, we look at four-manifolds produced from braids by a surgery construction. The outcome shows that the invariant is nontrivial; however, it is an open question whether it is stronger than the known ones.Comment: 9 pages, LaTe

Picard-Lefschetz theory and dilating C^*-actions

We consider C^*-actions on Fukaya categories of exact symplectic manifolds. Such actions can be constructed by dimensional induction, going from the fibre of a Lefschetz fibration to its total space. We explore applications to the topology of Lagrangian submanifolds, with an emphasis on ease of computation.Comment: v3: appendectomy performed; to appear in Journal of Topolog

More about vanishing cycles and mutation

The paper continues the discussion of symplectic aspects of Picard-Lefschetz theory begun in "Vanishing cycles and mutation" (this archive). There we explained how to associate to a suitable fibration over a two-dimensional disc a triangulated category, the "derived directed Fukaya category" which describes the structure of the vanishing cycles. The present second part serves two purposes. Firstly, it contains various kinds of algebro-geometric examples, including the "mirror manifold" of the projective plane. Secondly there is a (largely conjectural) discussion of more advanced topics, such as (i) Hochschild cohomology, (ii) relations between Picard-Lefschetz theory and Morse theory, (iii) a proposed "dimensional reduction" algorithm for doing certain Floer cohomology computations.Comment: 33 pages, LaTeX2e, 9 eps figure

Graded Lagrangian submanifolds

In the usual setup, the grading on Floer homology is relative: it is unique only up to adding a constant. "Graded Lagrangian submanifolds" are Lagrangian submanifolds with a bit of extra structure, which fixes the ambiguity in the grading. The idea is originally due to Kontsevich. This paper contains an exposition of the theory. Several applications are given, amongst them: (1) topological restrictions on Lagrangian submanifolds of projective space, (2) the existence of "symplectically knotted" Lagrangian spheres on a K3 surface, (3) a result about the symplectic monodromy of weighted homogeneous hypersurface singularities. Revised version: minor modifications, journal reference added.Comment: LaTex2e, 32 pages, one eps figur