Comparing invariants of Legendrian knots

We prove the equivalence of the invariants EH(L) and LOSS-(L) for oriented Legendrian knots L in the 3-sphere equipped with the standard contact structure, partially extending a previous result by Stipsicz and Vertesi. In the course of the proof we relate the sutured Floer homology groups associated with a knot complement and knot Floer homology, and define intermediate Legendrian invariants.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1201.528

Heegaard Floer homology and concordance bounds on the Thurston norm

We prove that twisted correction terms in Heegaard Floer homology provide lower bounds on the Thurston norm of certain cohomology classes determined by the strong concordance class of a 2-component link $L$ in $S^3$. We then specialise this procedure to knots in $S^2\times S^1$, and obtain a lower bound on their geometric winding number. Furthermore we produce an obstruction for a knot in $S^3$ to have untwisting number 1. We then provide an infinite family of null-homologous knots with increasing geometric winding number, on which the bound is sharp.Comment: With an appendix with Adam Simon Levine; 24 pages, 8 figures; comments welcome! V2: Fixed a few typos, wrong citations and figures, removed a proposition. This version to appear in Transactions of the AM

On Stein fillings of contact torus bundles

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 equivalent Stein fillings of (Y,C).Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures. This preprint version differs from the final version which is to appear in the Bulletin of the London Mathematical Societ

Heegaard Floer correction terms, with a twist

We use Heegaard Floer homology with twisted coefficients to define numerical invariants for arbitrary closed 3-manifolds equipped torsion spin$^c$ structures, generalising the correction terms (or $d$--invariants) defined by Ozsv\'ath and Szab\'o for integer homology 3-spheres and, more generally, for 3-manifolds with standard ${\rm HF}^\infty$. Our twisted correction terms share many properties with their untwisted analogues. In particular, they provide restrictions on the topology of 4-manifolds bounding a given 3-manifold.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures; New proof of additivity (Proposition 3.7) based on a connected sum formula for twisted coefficients (Proposition 2.3); exposition improved, mainly in Section 4; Proposition 3.8 downgraded to an inequality due to an error in the previous version found by Adam Levin

Pair of pants decomposition of 4-manifolds

Using tropical geometry, Mikhalkin has proved that every smooth complex hypersurface in $\mathbb{CP}^{n+1}$ decomposes into pairs of pants: a pair of pants is a real compact $2n$-manifold with cornered boundary obtained by removing an open regular neighborhood of $n+2$ generic hyperplanes from $\mathbb{CP}^n$. As is well-known, every compact surface of genus $g\geqslant 2$ decomposes into pairs of pants, and it is now natural to investigate this construction in dimension 4. Which smooth closed 4-manifolds decompose into pairs of pants? We address this problem here and construct many examples: we prove in particular that every finitely presented group is the fundamental group of a 4-manifold that decomposes into pairs of pants.Comment: 41 pages, 25 figures; exposition has been improved; the proof of Theorem 2 was incorrect, and it has been fixed. Accepted for publications in Algebr. Geom. Topo

Nearly AdS2 Sugra and the Super-Schwarzian

In nearly AdS2 gravity the Einstein-Hilbert term is supplemented by the Jackiw-Teitelboim action. Integrating out the bulk metric gives rise to the Schwarzian action for the boundary curve. In the present note, we show how the extension to supergravity leads to the super-Schwarzian action for the superspace boundary.Comment: 10 pages, v2: minor error corrected, references added,v3: more references added, accepted for publicatio