Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

We discuss two concepts of low-dimensional topology in higher dimensions: near-symplectic manifolds and overtwisted contact structures. We present a generalization of near-symplectic 4-manifolds to dimension 6. By near-symplectic, we understand a closed 2-form that is symplectic outside a small submanifold where it degenerates. This approach uses some singular mappings called generalized broken Lefschetz fibrations. An application of this setting appears in contact topology.

The goal of this talk is to study geography and classification problem for Stein fillings of contact structures supported by planar open books. In the first part we will prove that for contact structures supported by planar open books Stein fillings have a finite geography. In the second part we will outline an approach to classify Stein fillings of manifolds supported by planar open books.

We study some finite quotients of the A_n Milnor fibre which coincide with the Stein surfaces that appear in Fintushel and Stern's rational blowdown construction. We show that these Stein surfaces have no exact Lagrangian submanifolds by using the already available and deep understanding of the Fukaya category of the A_n Milnor fibre coming from homological mirror symmetry. On the contrary, we find Floer theoretically essential monotone Lagrangian tori, finitely covered by the monotone tori that we studied in the A_n Milnor fibre.

One of the most outstanding problems in differential geometry is concerned with flexibility of closed surface in Euclidean 3-space: Is it possible to continuously deform a smooth closed surface without changing its intrinsic metric structure? In this talk I will give a quick survey of known results in this area, which is primarily concerned with convex surfaces, and outline a program for studying the general case.

We will give an overview of open book foliation method by emphasizing the aspect that it is a generalization of Birman-Menasco's braid foliation theory. We explain how surfaces in open book reflects topology and (contact) geometry of underlying 3-manifolds, and will give several applications. This talk is based on joint work with Keiko Kawamuro.

The talk will be about manifolds covered by the Euclidean space yet admitting no complete metric of nonpositive curvature.

In this talk we introduce the notions of the contact angle and of the holomorphic angle for immersed surfaces in $S^{2n+1}$. We deduce formulas for the Laplacian and for the Gaussian curvature, and we will classify minimal surfaces in $S^5$ with the two angles constant. This classification gives a 2-parameter family of minimal flat tori of $S^5$. Also, we will give an alternative proof of the classification of minimal Legendrian surfaces in $S^5$ with constant Gaussian curvature. Finally, we will show some remarks and generalizations of this classification.

In the talk we will start from examples of open surfaces, such as the complex plane minus a Cantor set, review their classification, and then move to higher dimensions, where we discuss ends of manifolds in the topological setting, and finally in the geometric setting under the assumption of nonpositive curvature.

The fractional Dehn twist coefficient (FDTC), defined by Honda-Kazez-Matic, is an invariant of mapping classes. In this talk we study properties of FDTC by using open book foliation method, then obtain results in geometry and contact geometry of the open-book-manifold of a mapping class. This is joint work with Tetsuya Ito.

By a classical result of Eliashberg, contact manifolds in dimension 3 come in two flavors: tight (rigid) and overtwisted (flexible). Characterized by the presence of an "overtwisted disk", the overtwisted contact structures form a class where isotopy and homotopy classifications are equivalent.In higher dimensions, a class of flexible contact structures is yet to be found. However, some attempts to generalize the notion of an overtwisted disk have been made. One such object is a "plastikstufe" introduced by Niederkruger following some ideas of Gromov.