On the existence of tight contact structures on Seifert fibered 3-manifolds (Q1026418)

This paper is about the construction of positive tight contact structures on 3-dimensional Seifert manifolds. In a previous paper [``Ozsváth-Szabó invariants and tight contact three-manifolds. II.'', J. Differ. Geom. 75, No. 1, 109--141 (2007; Zbl 1112.57005)] the same authors had proved that the Seifert manifolds \(M_n\) obtained as \((2n-1)\)-surgery along the torus knot \(T_{2,2n-1}\) do not carry positive tight contact structures. In the paper under review it is proved however that every other 3-dimensional Seifert manifold does admit a positive tight contact structure. The proof requires many case distinctions but the basic new ingredient is a nonvanishing criterion for the contact Ozsváth-Szabó invariant. This invariant was introduced by \textit{P. Ozsváth} and \textit{Z. Szabó} in [``Heegard Floer homology and contact structures'', Duke Math. J. 129, No. 1, 39--61 (2005; Zbl 1083.57042)] as an invariant of contact manifolds with values in the Heegard-Floer homology (which is associated to the spin\(^c\) structure determined by the contact field). Nonvanishing of the Ozsváth-Szabó invariant implies tightness of the contact structure. In Theorem 3.3 of the paper under review the authors give a sufficient criterion for nonvanishing of the Ozsváth-Szabó invariant for contact structures given by certain surgery diagrams. In the main body of the paper this is then applied to the Seifert manifolds in question.