On Legendrian products and twist spuns (Q2035041)

The authors show that the Legendrian product of two Legendrian knots is a twist spun whenever one of the knot components is sufficiently large. They also produce examples of Legendrian products that are not Legendrian isotopic to twist spuns, and they show that certain covers of the Clifford torus and the Chekanov torus are not twist spuns. The authors consider contact manifolds of the form \((P \times \mathbb{R},\alpha)\), where \((P^{2n},d\eta)\) is a \(2n\)-dimensional Liouville manifold and \(\alpha = dz + \eta\) with \(z\) the coordinate on \(\mathbb{R}\). A Legendrian submanifold \(\Lambda \subset P \times \mathbb{R}\) is an \(n\)-dimensional smooth submanifold that satisfies \(T_x \Lambda \subset \text{ker } \alpha\) for all \(x \in \Lambda\), and \(\Lambda_1 < \Lambda_2\) for two Legendrian submanifolds if and only if the length of the longest Reeb chord on \(\Lambda_1\) is strictly smaller than the length of the shortest Reeb chord on \(\Lambda_2\), where the length of a Reeb chord \(c\) is given by \(\int_c \alpha\). Given two Legendrian submanifolds \[ \iota_i: \Lambda_i \hookrightarrow (P_i \times \mathbb{R}, dz_i + \eta_i), \quad i = 1,2 \] the authors follow [\textit{P. Lambert-Cole}, ``Legendrian products'', \url{arXiv:1301.3700}] and define the \textit{Legendrian product} to be the Legendrian immersion \[ \Lambda_1 \boxtimes \Lambda_2 \looparrowright (P_1 \times P_2 \times \mathbb{R}, dz + \eta_1 + \eta_2) \] defined by \[ \iota_1 \boxtimes \iota_2 (u_1,u_2) = \left(\Pi_{P_1}(\iota_1(u_1)), \Pi_{P_2}(\iota_2(u_2)), z_1(\iota_1(u_1)) + z_2(\iota_2(u_2))\right). \] The Legendrian product is \textit{embedded} if and only if the Legendrians have distinct Reeb chord lengths. \textit{Twist spuns} are certain Legendrian tori that were introduced by \textit{T. Ekholm} and \textit{T. Kálmán} [J. Symplectic Geom. 6, No. 4, 407--460 (2008; Zbl 1206.57030)]. In this paper the authors study the following higher-dimensional twist spuns. Let \(\Lambda_\theta\) be an \(S^k\)-family of Legendrian embeddings in \((P \times \mathbb{R}, dz + \eta)\). \textbf{Definition 1.5} The \textit{suspension} of the family \(\Lambda_\theta \subset P \times \mathbb{R}\) is the unique Legendrian \[ \Sigma_{S^k}\{\Lambda_\theta\} \subset (P \times T^*S^k \times \mathbb{R}, dz + \eta - y\, dx) \] determined by the property that its image under the canonical projection \[ \Pi: P \times T^* S^k \times \mathbb{R} \rightarrow P \times S^k \times \mathbb{R} \] is equal to \[ \{(x,\theta,z) \in P \times S^k \times \mathbb{R}|\ (x,z) \in \Lambda_\theta \}, \] which is an embedded manifold. The \(S^k\)-\textit{twist spun} of the family \(\{\Lambda_\theta\}_{\theta \in S^k}\) is then defined to be the image of the Legendrian suspension \(\Sigma_{S^k} \{\Lambda_\theta\}\) under a canonical strict contact embedding into \((P \times \mathbb{R}^{2k} \times \mathbb{R}, dz + \eta - y_i\, dx_i)\). The first main result in this paper generalizes a result of Lambert-Cole: \textbf{Theorem 1.13} Let \(\Lambda_1 \subset (\mathbb{R}^{2n_1 + 1}, \alpha)\) be a Legendrian submanifold and \(\Lambda_2 \subset (\mathbb{R}^{2n_2 + 1}, \alpha)\) a Legendrian sphere which is \(n_1\)-stably formally Legendrian isotopic to the standard sphere \(W^{n_2}\). If \(\Lambda_1 < \Lambda_2\), then it follows that \(\Lambda_1 \boxtimes \Lambda_2\) is Legendrian isotopic to a twist spun of an \(S^{n_2}\)-family of Legendrians which is obtained from \(\Lambda_1\) by a suitable family of rotations, each being a contact lift of the linear symplectic \(\mathrm{U}(n_1)\)-action. Furthermore: \begin{itemize} \item In the case when \(\Lambda_2\) is formally Legendrian isotopic to the standard sphere \(W^k\), the product is Legendrian isotopic to the ordinary spun of \(\Lambda_1\), i.e., the twist spun \(\Sigma\{\Lambda_1\}\) of the constant family. \item In the case when \(n_2 = 1\) it follows that \(\Lambda_1 \boxtimes \Lambda_2\) is Legendrian isotopic to the twist spun of the family of Legendrians that covers the image of \(\Pi_{\mathbb{R}^{2n_1}}(\Lambda_1)\) under the family \[ (z_1,z_2,\ldots , z_{n_1}) \mapsto (e^{i \text{rot}(\Lambda_2) \cdot \theta} z_1,z_2, \ldots, z_{n_1}), \quad \theta \in S^1, \] of rotations. \end{itemize} The second main result in the paper gives an example of a Legendrian product that is not Legendrian isotopic to a twist spun: \textbf{Theorem 1.16} There exist Legendrian product tori \(\Lambda = \Lambda_1 \boxtimes \Lambda_2 \subset \mathbb{R}^5\) which are not Legendrian isotopic to any twist spun of a family of Legendrian knots. In Section 6 the authors prove that the threefold Bohr-Sommerfeld covers of the Clifford torus and Chekanov torus discussed in [\textit{G. Dimitroglou Rizell} and \textit{R. Golovko}, ``Legendrian submanifolds from Bohr-Sommerfeld covers of monotone Lagrangian tori'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1901.08415}] are not twist spuns.