arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Kai Zehmisch.
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.
We show the existence of a contractible periodic Reeb orbit for any contact structure supported by an open book whose binding can be realised as a hypersurface of restricted contact type in a subcritical Stein manifold. A key ingredient in the proof is a higher-dimensional version of Eliashberg's theorem about symplectic cobordisms from a contact manifold to a symplectic fibration.
We study holomorphic spheres in certain symplectic cobordisms and derive information about periodic Reeb orbits in the concave end of these cobordisms from the non-compactness of the relevant moduli spaces. We use this to confirm the strong Weinstein conjecture (predicting the existence of null-homologous Reeb links) for various higher-dimensional contact manifolds, including contact type hypersurfaces in subcritical Stein manifolds and in some cotangent bundles. The quantitative character of this result leads to the definition of a symplectic capacity.
We show that any simple holomorphic disc admits the annulus property, i.e., each interior point is surrounded by an arbitrary small annulus consisting entirely of injective points. As an application we show that interior singularities of holomorphic discs can be resolved after slight perturbation of the almost complex structure. Moreover, for boundary points the analogue notion, the half-annulus property, is introduced and studied in detail.
Following a line of reasoning suggested by Eliashberg, we prove Cerf's theorem that any diffeomorphism of the 3-sphere extends over the 4-ball. To this end we develop a moduli-theoretic version of Eliashberg's filling-with-holomorphic-discs method.
Extending work of Chen, we prove the Weinstein conjecture in dimension three for strongly fillable contact structures with either non-vanishing first Chern class or with strong and exact filling having non-trivial canonical bundle. This implies the Weinstein conjecture for certain Stein fillable contact structures obtained by the Eliashberg-Gompf construction.For example we prove the Weinstein conjecture for the Brieskorn homology spheres $Σ(2,3,6n-1)$, $n\geq2$, oriented as the boundary of the corresponding Milnor fibre. Furthermore, for tight contact structures on odd lens spaces, non-contractible closed Reeb orbits are found.