Some remarks on the size of tubular neighborhoods in contact topology and fillability

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,\xi_N) is a 3-dimensional overtwisted submanifold with trivial normal bundle in (M,\xi), and if its model neighborhood is sufficiently large, then (M,\xi) does not admit an exact symplectic filling.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures; added example of manifold that is not fillable by neighborhood criterium; typo

Open book decompositions for contact structures on Brieskorn manifolds

In this paper, we give an open book decomposition for the contact structures on some Brieskorn manifolds, in particular for the contact structures of Ustilovsky. The decomposition uses right-handed Dehn twists as conjectured by Giroux.Comment: 6 pages, no figure

Compact Lie group actions on contact manifolds

The main result in this thesis is the classification of SO(3)-actions on contact 5-manifolds. Using properties of the moment map, one can reduce the manifold to a 3-dimensional contact manifold with an S^1-action. This works everywhere outside of the singular orbits. For the singular orbits three models can be given that describe all possible cases. The 5-manifold is then obtained by gluing the singular set onto the 3-dimensional S^1-manifold in a compatible way. As it is well-known, S^1-bundles over a closed surface are classified by an integer called the Euler number. A similar invariant can be recovered in our 3-dimensional setting. We call it the Dehn-Euler number

The Weinstein conjecture in the presence of submanifolds having a Legendrian foliation

Helmut Hofer introduced in '93 a novel technique based on holomorphic curves to prove the Weinstein conjecture. Among the cases where these methods apply are all contact 3--manifolds $(M,\xi)$ with $\pi_2(M) \ne 0$. We modify Hofer's argument to prove the Weinstein conjecture for some examples of higher dimensional contact manifolds. In particular, we are able to show that the connected sum with a real projective space always has a closed contractible Reeb orbit.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

The plastikstufe - a generalization of the overtwisted disk to higher dimensions

In this article, we give a first prototype-definition of overtwistedness in higher dimensions. According to this definition, a contact manifold is called "overtwisted" if it contains a "plastikstufe", a submanifold foliated by the contact structure in a certain way. In three dimensions the definition of the plastikstufe is identical to the one of the overtwisted disk. The main justification for this definition lies in the fact that the existence of a plastikstufe implies that the contact manifold does not have a (semipositive) symplectic filling.Comment: This is the version published by Algebraic & Geometric Topology on 15 December 200

Loose Legendrians and the plastikstufe

We show that the presence of a plastikstufe induces a certain degree of flexibility in contact manifolds of dimension 2n + 1 gt; 3. More precisely, we prove that every Legendrian knot whose complement contains a "nice" plastikstufe can be destabilized (and, as a consequence, is loose). As an application, it follows in certain situations that two nonisomorphic contact structures become isomorphic after connect-summing with a manifold containing a plastikstufe

Brieskorn manifolds as contact branched covers of spheres

We show that Brieskorn manifolds with their standard contact structures are contact branched coverings of spheres. This covering maps a contact open book decomposition of the Brieskorn manifold onto a Milnor open book of the sphere.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur

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

5-dimensional contact SO(3)-manifolds and Dehn twists

In this paper the 5-dimensional contact SO(3)-manifolds are classified up to equivariant contactomorphisms. The construction of such manifolds with singular orbits requires the use of generalized Dehn twists. We show as an application that all simply connected 5-manifoldswith singular orbits are realized by a Brieskorn manifold with exponents (k,2,2,2). The standard contact structure on such a manifold gives right-handed Dehn twists, and a second contact structure defined in the article gives left-handed twists.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure; simplification of arguments by restricting classification to coorientation preserving contactomorphism