arXiv subjects

Michael G. Sullivan

Publications and source records attributed to Michael G. Sullivan.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Skein relations for invariants of Legendrian surfaces

For Legendrian surfaces in 1-jet spaces, we consider augmentation number invariants that together generalize the ruling polynomial of 1-dimensional Legendrian knots and establish skein relations for these invariants. The main skein relation involves four ways of resolving a Legendrian with a double point: perturbing the double point to a contractible Reeb chord in two different ways, and removing the double point via the two Lagrangian surgeries. We apply the skein relations in examples, and use them to provide an alternate proof of the relation between augmentations of Legendrian 2-weaves and face colorings due to Casals, Murphy, and Sackel.

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arXiv2024

$C^0$-limits of Legendrians and positive loops

We show that the image of a Legendrian submanifold under a homeomorphism that is the $C^0$-limit of a sequence of contactomorphisms is again Legendrian, if the image of the submanifold is smooth. In proving this, we show that any non-Legendrian submanifold of a contact manifold admits a positive loop and we provide a parametric refinement of the Rosen--Zhang result on the degeneracy of the Chekanov--Hofer--Shelukhin pseudo-norm for non-Legendrians.

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arXiv2022

The persistence of a relative Rabinowitz-Floer complex

We give a quantitative refinement of the invariance of the Legendrian contact homology algebra in general contact manifolds. We show that in this general case, the Lagrangian cobordism trace of a Legendrian isotopy defines a DGA stable tame isomorphism which is similar to a bifurcation invariance-proof for a contactization contact manifold. We use this result to construct a relative version of the Rabinowitz-Floer complex defined for Legendrians that also satisfies a quantitative invariance, and study its persistent homology barcodes. We apply these barcodes to prove several results, including: displacement energy bounds for Legendrian submanifolds in terms of the oscillatory norms of the contact Hamiltonians; a proof of Rosen and Zhang's non-degeneracy conjecture for the Shelukhin--Chekanov--Hofer metric on Legendrian submanifolds; and, the non-displaceability of the standard Legendrian real-projective space inside the contact real-projective space.

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arXiv2022

$C^0$-limits of Legendrian knots and contact non-squeezing

Take a sequence of contactomorphisms of a contact three-manifold that $C^0$-converges to a homeomorphism. If the images of a Legendrian knot limit to a smooth knot under this sequence, we show that it is Legendrian. We prove this by establishing that, on one hand, non-Legendrian knots admit a type of contact-squeezing onto transverse knots while, on the other, Legendrian knots do not admit such a squeezing. The non-trivial input from contact topology that is needed is (a local version of) the Thurston--Bennequin inequality.

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arXiv2020

The persistence of the Chekanov-Eliashberg algebra

We apply the barcodes of persistent homology theory to the Chekanov-Eliashberg algebra of a Legendrian submanifold to deduce displacement energy bounds for arbitrary Legendrians. We do not require the full Chekanov-Eliashberg algebra to admit an augmentation as we linearize the algebra only below a certain action level. As an application we show that it is not possible to $C^0$-approximate a stabilized Legendrian by a Legendrian that admits an augmentation.

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arXiv2019

Sheaves via augmentations of Legendrian surfaces

Given an augmentation for a Legendrian surface in a $1$-jet space, $Λ\subset J^1(M)$, we explicitly construct an object, $\mathcal{F} \in Sh_Λ$, of the (derived) category from arXiv:1402.0490 of constructible sheaves on $M\times R$ with singular support determined by $Λ$. In the construction, we introduce a simplicial Legendrian DGA (differential graded algebra) for Legendrian submanifolds in $1$-jet spaces that, based on arXiv:1608.02984 and arXiv:1608.03011, is equivalent to the Legendrian contact homology DGA in the case of Legendrian surfaces. In addition, we extend the approach of arXiv:1402.0490 for $1$-dimensional Legendrian knots to obtain a combinatorial model for sheaves in $Sh_Λ$ in the $2$-dimensional case.

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arXiv2018

An energy-capacity inequality for Legendrian submanifolds

We prove that the number of Reeb chords between a Legendrian submanifold and its contact Hamiltonian push-off is at least the sum of the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-Betti numbers of the submanifold, provided that the contact isotopy is sufficiently small when compared to the smallest Reeb chord on the Legendrian. Moreover, the established invariance enables us to use two different contact forms: one for the count of Reeb chords and another for the measure of the smallest length, under the assumption that there is a suitable symplectic cobordism from the latter to the former. The size of the contact isotopy is measured in terms of the oscillation of the contact Hamiltonian, together with the maximal factor by which the contact form is shrunk during the isotopy. The main tool used is a Mayer--Vietoris sequence for Lagrangian Floer homology, obtained by "neck-stretching" and "splashing."

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arXiv2013

Families of Legendrian Submanifolds via Generating Families

We investigate families of Legendrian submanifolds of 1-jet spaces by developing and applying a theory of families of generating family homologies. This theory allows us to detect an infinite family of loops of Legendrian n-spheres embedded in the standard contact (2n+1)-space (for n>1) that are contractible in the smooth, but not Legendrian, categories.

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arXiv2012

A bordered Legendrian contact algebra

Sivek proves a "van Kampen" decomposition theorem for the combinatorial Legendrian contact algebra (also known as the Chekanov-Eliashberg algebra) of knots in standard contact $\R^3$ . We prove an analogous result for the holomorphic curve version of the Legendrian contact algebra of certain Legendrians submanifolds in standard contact $J^1(M).$ This includes all 1- and 2-dimensional Legendrians, and some higher dimensional ones. We present various applications including a Mayer-Vietoris sequence for linearized contact homology similar to Sivek's and a connect sum formula for the augmentation variety introduced by Ng. The main tool is the theory of gradient flow trees developed by Ekholm.

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arXiv2005

Legendrian Contact Homology in P X R

A rigorous foundation for the contact homology of Legendrian submanifolds in a contact manifold of the form $P\times \R$ where $P$ is an exact symplectic manifold is established. The class of such contact manifolds include 1-jet spaces of smooth manifolds. As an application, contact homology is used to provide (smooth) isotopy invariants of submanifolds of $\R^n$ and, more generally, invariants of self transverse immersions into $\R^n$ up to restricted regular homotopies. When $n=3$, this application is the first step in extending and providing a contact geometric underpinning for the new knot invariants of Ng

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arXiv2004

Orientations in Legendrian Contact Homology and Exact Lagrangian Immersions

We show how to orient moduli spaces of holomorphic disks with boundary on an exact Lagrangian immersion of a spin manifold into complex n-space in a coherent manner. This allows us to lift the coefficients of the contact homology of Legendrian spin submanifolds of standard contact (2n+1)-space from Z_2 to Z. We demonstrate how the Z-lift provides a more refined invariant of Legendrian isotopy. We also apply contact homology to produce lower bounds on double points of certain exact Lagrangian immersions into C^n and again including orientations strengthens the results. More precisely, we prove that the number of double points of an exact Lagrangian immersion of a closed manifold M whose associated Legendrian embedding has good DGA is at least half of the dimension of the homology of M with coefficients in an arbitrary field if M is spin and in Z_2 otherwise.

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arXiv2002

Legendrian Submanifolds in $R^{2n+1}$ and Contact Homology

Contact homology for Legendrian submanifolds in standard contact $(2n+1)$-space is rigorously defined using moduli spaces of holomorphic disks with Lagrangian boundary conditions in complex $n$-space. It provides new invariants of Legendrian isotopy. Using these invariants the theory of Legendrian isotopy is shown to be very rich. For example, infinite families of pairwise non-isotopic Legendrian $n$-spheres and $n$-tori, which are indistinguishable by means of previously known invariants, are constructed. In a sense, the definition of contact homology presented in this paper is a high dimensional analog of the work of Chekanov and others on Legendrian 1-knots in 3-space.

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