We give combinatorial descriptions of the Heegaard Floer homology groups for arbitrary three-manifolds (with coefficients in Z/2). The descriptions are based on presenting the three-manifold as an integer surgery on a link in the three-sphere, and then using a grid diagram for the link. We also give combinatorial descriptions of the mod 2 Ozsvath-Szabo mixed invariants of closed four-manifolds, in terms of grid diagrams.
We describe some of the algebra underlying the decomposition of planar grid diagrams. This provides a useful toy model for an extension of Heegaard Floer homology to 3-manifolds with parametrized boundary. This paper is meant to serve as a gentle introduction to the subject, and does not itself have immediate topological applications.
For some geometries including symplectic and contact structures on an n-dimensional manifold, we introduce a two-step approach to Gromovs h-principle. From formal geometric data, the first step builds a transversely geometric Haefliger structure of codimension n. This step works on all manifolds, even closed. The second step, which works only on open manifolds and for all geometries, regularizes the intermediate Haefliger structure and produces a genuine geometric structure. Both steps admit relative parametri
Periodic surface homemorphisms (diffeomorphisms) play a significant role in the the Nielsen-Thurston classification of surface homeomorphisms. Periodic surface homeomorphisms can be described (up to conjugacy) by using data sets which are combinatorial objects. In this article, we start by associating a rational open book to a slight modification of a given data set, called marked data set. It is known that every rational open book supports a contact structure. Thus, we can associate a contact structure to a periodic map and study the properties of it in terms combinatorial conditions on marked data sets. In particular, we prove that a class of data sets, satisfying easy-to-check combinatorial hypothesis, gives rise to Stein fillable contact structures. In addition to the above, we prove an analogue of Moris construction of explicit symplectic filling for rational open books. We also prove a sufficient condition for Stein fillability of rational open books analogous to the positivity of monodromy in honest open books as in the result of Giroux and Loi-Piergallini.
We give an elementary topological obstruction for a $(2q{+}1)$-manifold $M$ to admit a contact open book with flexible Weinstein pages: if the torsion subgroup of the $q$-th integral homology group is non-zero, then no such contact open book exists. We achieve this by proving that a symplectomorphism of a flexible Weinstein manifold acts trivially on cohomology. We also produce examples of non-trivial loops of flexible contact structures using related ideas.