Contact structures on 5-manifolds

Series
Geometry Topology Working Seminar
Time
Friday, June 22, 2012 - 2:00pm for 2 hours
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
John Etnyre – Ga Tech
Organizer
John Etnyre
There is little known about the existence of contact strucutres in high dimensions, but recently in work of Casals, Pancholi and Presas the 5 dimensional case is largely understood. In this talk I will discuss the existence of contact structures on 5-manifold and outline an alternate construction that will hopefully prove that any almost contact structure on a 5-manifold is homotopic, though almost contact structures, to a contact structure.