A note on contact structures (Q1392488)

Two tight contact structures on a homology sphere are constructed which are isomorphic and homotopic through 2-plane fields, but not isotopic. A diffeomorphism permutes these two contact structures. The given example shows that the group of diffeomorphisms can act nontrivially on the set of path components of oriented contact structures, while the action of this group is trivial on the set of path components of oriented tangent plane distributions. An earlier similar example was constructed by \textit{Ya. Eliashberg} and \textit{L. Polterovich} in the case of the 3-torus \(T^3\) [Comment. Math. Helv. 69, 512-522 (1994; Zbl 0853.57012)].