Surface singularities and planar contact structures (Q2027750)

Let \(M\) be a closed, oriented \(3\)-manifold. By a theorem of Giroux, there is a bijection between the isotopy classes of co-oriented contact structures on \(M\) and the open book decompositions of \(M\) up to positive stabilization. A contact manifold is said to admit a planar open book decomposition if the latter has a page of genus \(0\) (and arbitrary number of boundary components). Such ``planar'' contact structures have special properties, for example their weak symplectic fillings have negative definite intersection form, which implies that planar contact structures cannot arise from perturbations of taut foliations. Overtwisted contact structures are always planar. The paper under review develops new obstructions for planarity of a contact structure in terms of the topology of symplectic fillings. A special case of the results concerns links of isolated surface singularities in \(\mathbb{C}^3\). In this case the authors obtain that the canonical contact structure is planar if and only if the singularity is of type \(A_n\), that is locally isomorphic to \(x^2+y^2+z^{n+1}=0\). In general the authors prove that certain intersection forms are not possible for the minimal weak symplectic fillings of planar contact structures. Namely, it can not happen that there are homology classes \(B_1,\ldots,B_k,X\) with \(B_i\cdot X=1, B_i\cdot B_j=0,B_i\cdot B_i\in\left\{2,3\right\},X\cdot X>-k\) for all \(i\not=j\). This excludes planarity of tight contact structures on Seifert fibered spaces \(M(-2;r_1,r_2,r_3)\) whenever they are L-spaces and satisfy \(r_1,r_2,r_3\ge\frac{1}{3}\). In the course of the proof the authors show that a weak symplectic filling of a planar contact structure cannot contain a symplectic surface of positive genus, which may be of independent interest. It implies nonplanarity of the Boothby-Wang contact structures for \(g>0\).