Legendrian contact homology in the boundary of a subcritical Weinstein 4-manifold (Q2515810)

A Weinstein manifold is a \(2n\)-dimensional symplectic manifold \(X\) which outside a compact subset agrees with \(Y\times[0,\infty)\) for some contact \((2n-1)\)-manifold \(Y\) and which has the following properties: (i)\, the symplectic form \(\omega\) on \(X\) is exact, \(\omega=d\lambda\), and agrees with the standard symplectization form in the end \(Y\times[0,\infty)\), \(\lambda=e^t\alpha\), where \(t\in[0,\infty)\) and \(\alpha\) is a contact form on \(Y\), (ii)\,the Liouville vector field \(Z\) \(\omega\)-dual to \(\lambda\), \(\omega(Z,\cdot)=\lambda\), is gradient-like for some Morse function \(H:X\to\mathbb R\) with \(H(y,t)=t\), \((y,t)\in Y\times[0,\infty)\subset X\). The critical points of \(H\) are zeros of \(Z\) and the flow of \(Z\) gives a finite handle decomposition for \(X\). The unstable manifold of any zero of \(Z\) is isotropic and hence the handles of \(X\) have dimension at most \(n\). The isotropic handles of dimension \(<n\) are called subcritical and the Lagrangian handles of dimension \(n\) critical. A Weinstein manifold is called subcritical if all its handles are subcritical. In [Geom. Topol. 16, No. 1, 301--389 (2012; Zbl 1322.53080)], \textit{F. Bourgeois} et al. presented a surgery formula that expresses the symplectic homology of a Weinstein manifold in terms of the Legendrian contact homology of the attaching sphere of its critical handles. Although Legendrian contact homology is a holomorphic curve theory, it is often computable as the homology of a differential graded algebra \((DGA)\) that can be described more simply and combinatorially. In this paper, the authors give a combinatorial description of the Legendrian contact homology algebra associated to a Legendrian link in \(S^1 \times S^2\) or any connected sum \(Y_k=\sharp^k(S^1 \times S^2)\), viewed as the contact boundary of the subcritical Weinstein manifold obtained by attaching 1-handles to the 4-ball. The Legendrian contact homology of a Legendrian link \(\Lambda\) is a part of Symplectic Field Theory and is in particular defined using moduli spaces of holomorphic disks. If \(Y\) is a contact manifold which is the ideal boundary of a Weinstein manifold \(X\) with vanishing first Chern class \(c_1(X)=0\) and \(\Lambda\subset Y\) is a Legendrian submanifold, then the Legendrian homology algebra \(\mathcal{A}H(Y,\Lambda)\) is the algebra freely generated over \(\mathbb Z[H_2(X,\Lambda)]\) by the set of Reeb chords of \(\Lambda\) graded by a Maslov index. If \(\Lambda\subset Y_k\), the Legendrian homology associates a \(DGA\, \mathcal{A}H(\Lambda)\) with differential \(\partial_H\) to \(\Lambda\). The differential \(\partial_H\) is defined through a count of holomorphic disks in the symplectization \(\mathbb R\times Y_k\) with Lagrangian boundary condition \(\mathbb R\times\Lambda\). The main result of the paper states that the Legendrian homology \(DGA\, \mathcal{A}_H(\Lambda)\) of a link \(\Lambda\subset Y_k\) in Gompf normal form is canonically isomorphic to the combinatorially defined algebra \(\mathcal{A}\) associated to \(\Lambda\), and that the canonical isomorphism is a one-to-one map that takes Reeb chords to generators of \(\mathcal{A}\) and that intertwines the differentials \(\partial H\) on \(\mathcal{A}_H\) and \(\partial\) on \(\mathcal{A}\).