Contact monoids and Stein cobordisms (Q2391583)

The author shows that a manifold \((M _{S,hg},\zeta_{S,hg})\) compatible with respect to an open book \((S,hg)\) is obtained by a contact \((-1)\) surgery on the contact connected sum \((M_{S,h},\zeta_{S,h})\sharp (M_{S,g},\zeta_{S,g})\) (here \(S\) is a compact surface with boundary and \(h\) and \(g\) are boundary fixing diffeomorphism of \(S\)). This means that properties which are closed under connected sum and contact \((-1)\) surgery are closed under compositions of orientation preserving boundary fixing diffeomorphisms of \(S\) whose open books have this property. Some of these properties are Stein fillabillity, strong symplectical fillabillity and weak symplectical fillabillity. Thus the categories of manifolds which come from the above open books and follow the above properties are monoids. The categories are called Stein\((S,\partial{S})\), Strong\((S,\partial{S})\), Weak\((S,\partial{S})\), respectively. This result also induces the comultiplication map in Heegaard Floer homology from [the author, Math. Res. Lett. 15, No. 2-3, 273--287 (2008; Zbl 1168.57019)]. In the end the author with similar arguments proves the Stein fillablity of contact manifolds coming as a cyclic branched cover over a Stein fillable contact manifold branched over a transverse knot \(K\) which realizes the Bennequin bound (i.e. the self linking number of the knot K equals the negative of the Euler characteristic).