arXiv subjects

Joseph Breen

Publications and source records attributed to Joseph Breen.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Hard Legendrian unknots

We initiate the study of Reidemeister hardness of Legendrian unknot front projections. Using normal rulings, we obstruct several infinite families of hard unknot diagrams from being drawn with max-tb unknot fronts, along with 1.7 million of the 2.6 million hard unknot diagrams studied in \cite{applebaum2024unknottingnumberhardunknot}. We construct infinitely many smoothly hard max-tb unknot diagrams, and bound their minimum possible writhe. With respect to these bounds, our constructions are conjecturally sharp.

math.GT↗

arXiv2026

Lagrangian slice disks with symplectomorphic exteriors

By modifying a construction of Abe and Tange, we exhibit arbitrarily large families of Lagrangian slice disks with Weinstein deformation equivalent exteriors. This answers a Lagrangian version of a question of Hitt and Sumners. We raise other open questions related to Lagrangian slice disks and their exteriors.

math.SG↗

arXiv2025

Regular Lagrangians in Lefschetz fibrations

We characterize regularity of Lagrangian submanifolds in Weinstein Lefschetz fibrations, establishing a conjecture of Giroux and Pardon. Our main result is the Weinstein analogue of a closed symplectic Lefschetz pencil result of Auroux, Mu\~noz, and Presas. As an application, given a Legendrian link in tight $S^3$ and an exact filling which is part of an arboreal skeleton for the $4$-ball, we build a Lefschetz fibration such that the image of the filling and all of its mutations are arcs in the base.

math.SG↗

arXiv2025

Quasipositive fiber surfaces are not well-quasi-ordered

By exhibiting an explicit infinite anti-chain, we show that the class of quasipositive fiber surfaces in $S^3$ is not well-quasi-ordered under the surface minor relation. This answers questions raised by Baader-Dehornoy-Liechti and Dehornoy-Lunel-de Mesmay in the negative.

math.GT↗

arXiv2025

Non-orientable Nurikabe

We study Nurikabe puzzles on non-orientable surfaces. Specifically, we propose two versions of non-orientable Nurikabe and investigate their combinatorics on M\"obius strips, Klein bottles, and projective planes of size $1\times n$. Our results establish new connections among the OEIS sequences A101946, A213387, A123203, and A001045 (the Jacobsthal sequence).

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

Regularly slice implies once-stably decomposably slice

We investigate the relationship between regular and decomposable Lagrangian cobordisms in $4$-dimensional symplectizations. First, we show that regular sliceness implies once-stably decomposable sliceness, and offer a stabilization-free strategy. On the other hand, we show that satelliting preserves regularity of concordance, suggesting that regularity and decomposability are distinct in general. Among other results, we compare the symplectic and smooth slice-ribbon conjectures and construct decomposably slice knots that may not be strongly decomposably slice.

math.SG↗

arXiv2024

Bypass moves in convex hypersurface theory

We construct bypass attachments in higher dimensional contact manifolds that, when attached to a neighborhood of a Weinstein hypersurface, yield a neighborhood of a new Weinstein hypersurface, obtained via local modifications to the Weinstein handle decomposition of the first. For context, we give $3$-dimensional analogues of these bypass attachments and discuss their appearance in nature. We then show that our bypass attachments give a necessary and sufficient set of moves relating any two Weinstein domains which become almost symplectomorphic after one stabilization. Finally, we use our construction to produce several examples of interesting convex hypersurfaces and recover an existence $h$-principle for Weinstein hypersurfaces.

math.SG↗

arXiv2023

Folded symplectic forms in contact topology

We establish the relationship between folded symplectic forms and convex hypersurface theory in contact topology. As an application, we use convex hypersurface theory to reprove and strengthen the existence result for folded symplectic forms due to Cannas da Silva, and we generalize to all even dimensions Baykur's $4$-dimensional existence result of folded Weinstein structures and folded Lefschetz fibrations.

math.SG↗

arXiv2023

The Giroux correspondence in arbitrary dimensions

We establish the Giroux correspondence in arbitrary dimensions. As corollaries we (i) give an alternate proof of a result of Giroux-Pardon that states that any Weinstein domain is Weinstein homotopic to one which admits a Weinstein Lefschetz fibration and (ii) prove that any two Weinstein Lefschetz fibrations whose Weinstein domain structures are Weinstein homotopic are related by the Weinstein Lefschetz fibration moves, affirming a conjecture of Giroux-Pardon.

math.SG↗

arXiv2021

Torus bundle Liouville domains are stably Weinstein

We develop explicit local operations that may be applied to Liouville domains, with the goal of simplifying the dynamics of the Liouville vector field. These local operations, which are Liouville homotopies, are inspired by the techniques used by Honda and Huang in [HH19] to show that convex hypersurfaces are $C^0$-generic in contact manifolds. As an application, we use our operations to show that certain Liouville-but-not-Weinstein domains constructed by Huang in [Hua20] are stably Weinstein.

math.SG↗

arXiv2019

Morse-Smale characteristic foliations and convexity in contact manifolds

We generalize a result of Giroux which says that a closed surface in a contact $3$-manifold with Morse-Smale characteristic foliation is convex. Specifically, we show that the result holds in contact manifolds of arbitrary dimension. As an application, we show that a particular closed hypersurface introduced by A. Mori is $C^{\infty}$-close to a convex hypersurface.

math.SG↗

arXiv2019

Convex hypersurface theory in contact topology

We lay the foundations of convex hypersurface theory in contact topology, extending the work of Giroux in dimension three. Specifically, we prove that any closed hypersurface in a contact manifold can be $C^0$-approximated by a convex one. We also prove that a $C^0$-generic family of mutually disjoint closed hypersurfaces parametrized by $t\in[0,1]$ is convex except at finitely many times $t_1,\dots,t_N$, and that crossing each $t_i$ corresponds to a bypass attachment. As an application, we prove the existence of compatible (relative) open book decompositions for contact manifolds.

math.SG↗