arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Bijan Sahamie.
We call two Engel structures isotopic if they are homotopic through Engel structures by a homotopy that fixes the characteristic line field. In the present paper we define an isotopy invariant of Engel structures on oriented circle bundles over closed oriented three-manifolds and apply it to give an isotopy classification of Engel structures on circle bundles with characteristic line field tangent to the fibers.
We apply spectral sequences to derive both an obstruction to the existence of $n$-fold prolongations and a topological classification. Prolongations have been used in the literature in an attempt to prove that every Engel structure on $M\times\mathbb{S}^1$ with characteristic line field tangent to the fibers is determined by the contact structure induced on a cross section and the twisting of the Engel structure along the fibers. Our results show that this statement needs some modification: to classify the diffeomorphism type of the Engel structure we additionally have to fix a class in the first cohomology of $M$.
For a closed oriented 3-manifold $Y$ we define $n(Y)$ to be the minimal non-negative number such that in each homotopy class of non-singular vector fields of $Y$ there is a Morse-Smale vector field with less or equal to $n(Y)$ periodic orbits. We combine the construction process of Morse-Smale flows given in [2] with handle decompositions of compact orientable surfaces to provide an upper bound to the number $n(Y)$ for oriented Seifert manifolds and oriented graph manifolds prime to $\stwo\times\sone$.
We define a new homology theory we call symbol homology by using decorated moduli spaces of Whitney polygons. By decorating different types of moduli spaces we obtain different flavors of this homology theory together with morphisms between them. Each of these flavors encodes the properties of a different type of Heegaard Floer homology. The morphisms between the symbol homologies enable us to push properties from one Floer theory to a different one. Furthermore, we obtain a new presentation of Heegaard Floer theory in which maps correspond to multiplication from the right with suitable elements of our symbol homology. Finally, we present the construction of cobordism maps in knot Floer theories and apply the tools from symbol homology to give an invariance proof.
We derive symmetries and adjunction inequalities of the knot Floer homology groups which appear to be especially interesting for homologically essential knots. Furthermore, we obtain an adjunction inequality for cobordism maps in knot Floer homologies. We demonstrate the adjunction inequalities and symmetries in explicit calculations which recover some of the main results from [1] on longitude Floer homology and also give rise to vanishing results on knot Floer homologies. Furthermore, using symmetries we prove that the knot Floer homology of a fiber distinguishes $\stwo\times\sone$ from other $\sone$-bundles over surfaces.
We show a connection between a surgery exact sequence in knot Floer homology and the sequence derived in [18]. As a consequence of this relationship we see that the exact sequence in [18] also works with coherent orientations and admits refinements with respect to spinc-structures. As an application of this discussion, we prove that the ranks of the image and kernel of certain cobordism maps between knot Floer homologies can be computed combinatorially by relating them to a count of certain moduli spaces of holomorphic disks.
This paper provides an introduction to the basics of Heegaard Floer homology with some emphasis on the hat theory and to the contact geometric invariants in the theory. The exposition is designed to be comprehensible to people without any prior knowledge of the subject.
We derive a new exact sequence in the hat-version of Heegaard Floer homology. As a consequence we see a functorial connection between the invariant of Legendrian knots and the contact element. As an application we derive two vanishing results of the contact element making it possible to easily read off its vanishing out of a surgery presentation in suitable situations.