Instanton Floer homology and contact structures (Q268179)

Instanton Floer homology was defined by \textit{A. Floer} in [Commun. Math. Phys. 118, No. 2, 215--240 (1988; Zbl 0684.53027)]. This is a three-manifold invariant defined using counts of solutions to the Yang-Mills (also called instanton) equation. This article considers a refinement of the sutured instanton Floer homology first defined in [\textit{P. Kronheimer} and \textit{T. Mrowka}, J. Differ. Geom. 84, No. 2, 301--364 (2010; Zbl 1208.57008)], defined for sutured three-manifolds with boundary. This refinement is used to construct a canonical homology class associated to a sutured contact three-manifold (i.e., either a closed contact manifold, or a contact manifold with a convex boundary endowed with additional data. See, e.g., [\textit{V. Colin} et al., Geom. Topol. 15, No. 3, 1749--1842 (2011; Zbl 1231.57026)]), which depends only on its contactomorphism class. It is also shown that this class contains information about the contact structure beyond classical invariants (e.g., the homotopy class of the plane field, etc.). Indeed, the invariant is shown to vanish for overtwisted contact structures, while it is non-vanishing for a closed Stein fillable contact manifold. The proof uses the refined version of sutured instanton Floer homology considered in [the authors, J. Differ. Geom. 100, No. 3, 395--480 (2015; Zbl 1334.57008)] together with the full Giroux correspondence between contact structures on three-manifolds, on the one hand, and open book decompositions up to positive stabilisation, on the other. An invariant with analogous properties for closed contact manifolds was defined in [\textit{P. Ozsváth} and \textit{Z. Szabó}, Duke Math. J. 129, No. 1, 39--61 (2005; Zbl 1083.57042)] in the setting of Heegaard-Floer homology. This invariant was later extended to sutured contact manifolds in [\textit{K. Honda} et al., Invent. Math. 176, No. 3, 637--676 (2009; Zbl 1171.57031)]. Finally, note that the authors have previously considered a similar invariant in the case of \textit{monopole} Floer homology. The latter Floer theory is more closely related to Heegaard Floer homology, and we refer to [\textit{C. Manolescu}, Jpn. J. Math. (3) 10, No. 2, 105--133 (2015; Zbl 1344.57011)] for an exposition.