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Hansjörg Geiges

Publications and source records attributed to Hansjörg Geiges.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2018

Lectures on controlled Reeb dynamics

These are notes based on a mini-course at the conference RIEMain in Contact, held in Cagliari, Sardinia, in June 2018. The main theme is the connection between Reeb dynamics and topology. Topics discussed include traps for Reeb flows, plugs for Hamiltonian flows, the Weinstein conjecture, Reeb flows with finite numbers of periodic orbits, and global surfaces of section for Reeb flows. The emphasis is on methods of construction, e.g. contact cuts and lifting group actions in Boothby-Wang bundles, that might be useful for other applications in contact topology.

math.DS↗
arXiv2018

Parallelisability of 3-manifolds via surgery

We present two proofs that all closed, orientable 3-manifolds are parallelisable. Both are based on the Lickorish-Wallace surgery presentation; one proof uses a refinement due to Kaplan and some basic contact geometry. This complements a recent paper by Benedetti-Lisca.

math.GT↗
arXiv2017

Odd-symplectic forms via surgery and minimality in symplectic dynamics

We construct an infinite family of odd-symplectic forms (also known as Hamiltonian structures) on the 3-sphere that do not admit a symplectic cobordism to the standard contact structure on the 3-sphere. This answers in the negative a question raised by Joel Fish motivated by the search for minimal characteristic flows.

math.DS↗
arXiv2017

Seifert fibrations of lens spaces

We classify the Seifert fibrations of any given lens space L(p,q). We give an algorithmic construction of a Seifert fibration of L(p,q) over the base orbifold S^2(m,n) with the coprime parts of m and n arbitrarily prescribed. This algorithm produces all possible Seifert fibrations, and the equivalences between the resulting Seifert fibrations are described completely. Also, we show that all Seifert fibrations are equivalent to certain standard models.

math.GT↗
arXiv2017

Isotopies vis-à-vis level-preserving embeddings

Various standard texts on differential topology maintain that the level-preserving map defined by the track of an isotopy of embeddings is itself an embedding. This note describes a simple counterexample to this assertion.

math.GT↗
arXiv2017

Reeb dynamics inspired by Katok's example in Finsler geometry

Inspired by Katok's examples of Finsler metrics with a small number of closed geodesics, we present two results on Reeb flows with finitely many periodic orbits. The first result is concerned with a contact-geometric description of magnetic flows on the 2-sphere found recently by Benedetti. We give a simple interpretation of that work in terms of a quaternionic symmetry. In the second part, we use Hamiltonian circle actions on symplectic manifolds to produce compact, connected contact manifolds in dimension at least five with arbitrarily large numbers of periodic Reeb orbits. This contrasts sharply with recent work by Cristofaro-Gardiner, Hutchings and Pomerleano on Reeb flows in dimension three. With the help of Hamiltonian plugs and a surgery construction due to Laudenbach we reprove a result of Cieliebak: one can produce Hamiltonian flows in dimension at least five with any number of periodic orbits; in dimension three, with any number greater than one.

math.DS↗
arXiv2017

Finsler geodesics, periodic Reeb orbits, and open books

We survey some results on the existence (and non-existence) of periodic Reeb orbits on contact manifolds, both in the open and closed case. We place these statements in the context of Finsler geometry by including a proof of the folklore theorem that the Finsler geodesic flow can be interpreted as a Reeb flow. As a mild extension of previous results we present existence statements on periodic Reeb orbits on contact manifolds with suitable supporting open books.

math.DS↗
arXiv2017

How to depict 5-dimensional manifolds

We usually think of 2-dimensional manifolds as surfaces embedded in Euclidean 3-space. Since humans cannot visualise Euclidean spaces of higher dimensions, it appears to be impossible to give pictorial representations of higher-dimensional manifolds. However, one can in fact encode the topology of a surface in a 1-dimensional picture. By analogy, one can draw 2-dimensional pictures of 3-manifolds (Heegaard diagrams), and 3-dimensional pictures of 4-manifolds (Kirby diagrams). With the help of open books one can likewise represent at least some 5-manifolds by 3-dimensional diagrams, and contact geometry can be used to reduce these to drawings in the 2-plane. In this paper, I shall explain how to draw such pictures and how to use them for answering topological and geometric questions. The work on 5-manifolds is joint with Fan Ding and Otto van Koert.

math.GT↗
arXiv2017

On subcritically Stein fillable 5-manifolds

We make some elementary observations concerning subcritically Stein fillable contact structures on 5-manifolds. Specifically, we determine the diffeomorphism type of such contact manifolds in the case the fundamental group is finite cyclic, and we show that on the 5-sphere the standard contact structure is the unique subcritically fillable one. More generally, it is shown that subcritically fillable contact structures on simply connected 5-manifolds are determined by their underlying almost contact structure. Along the way, we discuss the homotopy classification of almost contact structures.

math.GT↗
arXiv2016

The diffeomorphism type of symplectic fillings

We show that simply connected contact manifolds that are subcritically Stein fillable have a unique symplectically aspherical filling up to diffeomorphism. Various extensions to manifolds with non-trivial fundamental group are discussed. The proof rests on homological restrictions on symplectic fillings derived from a degree-theoretic analysis of the evaluation map on a suitable moduli space of holomorphic spheres. Applications of this homological result include a proof that compositions of right-handed Dehn twists on Liouville domains are of infinite order in the symplectomorphism group. We also derive uniqueness results for subcritical Stein fillings up to homotopy equivalence and, under some topological assumptions on the contact manifold, up to diffeomorphism or symplectomorphism.

math.SG↗
arXiv2016

Legendrian lens space surgeries

We show that every tight contact structure on any of the lens spaces $L(ns^2-s+1,s^2)$ with $n\geq 2$, $s\geq 1$, can be obtained by a single Legendrian surgery along a suitable Legendrian realisation of the negative torus knot $T(s,-(sn-1))$ in the tight or an overtwisted contact structure on the 3-sphere.

math.GT↗
arXiv2016

Transversely holomorphic flows and contact circles on spherical 3-manifolds

Motivated by the moduli theory of taut contact circles on spherical 3-manifolds, we relate taut contact circles to transversely holomorphic flows. We give an elementary survey of such 1-dimensional foliations from a topological viewpoint. We describe a complex analogue of the classical Godbillon-Vey invariant, the so-called Bott invariant, and a logarithmic monodromy of closed leaves. The Bott invariant allows us to formulate a generalised Gauß-Bonnet theorem. We compute these invariants for the Poincaré foliations on the 3-sphere and derive rigidity statements, including a uniformisation theorem for orbifolds. These results are then applied to the classification of taut contact circles.

math.DG↗
arXiv2014

The Weinstein conjecture for connected sums

We prove the Weinstein conjecture for non-trivial contact connected sums under either of two topological conditions: non-trivial fundamental group or torsion-free homology.

math.SG↗
arXiv2014

Reeb dynamics detects odd balls

We give a dynamical characterisation of odd-dimensional balls within the class of all contact manifolds whose boundary is a standard even-dimensional sphere. The characterisation is in terms of the non-existence of short periodic Reeb orbits.

math.SG↗
arXiv2013

How to recognise a 4-ball when you see one

We apply the method of filling with holomorphic discs to a 4-dimensional symplectic cobordism with the standard contact 3-sphere as a convex boundary component. We establish the following dichotomy: either the cobordism is diffeomorphic to a ball, or there is a periodic Reeb orbit of quantifiably short period in the concave boundary of the cobordism. This allows us to give a unified treatment of various results concerning Reeb dynamics on contact 3-manifolds, symplectic fillability, the topology of symplectic cobordisms, symplectic non-squeezing, and the non-existence of exact Lagrangian surfaces in standard symplectic 4-space.

math.SG↗
arXiv2013

Trapped Reeb orbits do not imply periodic ones

We construct a contact form on R^{2n+1}, n at least 2, equal to the standard contact form outside a compact set and defining the standard contact structure on all of R^{2n+1}, which has trapped Reeb orbits, including a torus invariant under the Reeb flow, but no closed Reeb orbits. This answers a question posed by Helmut Hofer.

math.SG↗