Towards a good definition of algebraically overtwisted (Q2654165)

Symplectic field theory (SFT) is a collection of homology theories that provide invariants for contact manifolds. It is an analogue of the quantum homology and Floer homology theory for symplectic manifolds, and was initiated by \textit{Y. M. Eliashberg, A. B. Givental} and \textit{H. Hofer} [in: GAFA 2000. Visions in mathematics -- Towards 2000. Proceedings of a meeting, Tel Aviv, Israel, August 25-September 3, 1999. Part II. Basel: Birkhäuser, 560--673 (2000; Zbl 0989.81114)]. However, their computations are difficult, even for the simplest of these homology theories -- contact homology. In a famous paper, \textit{Y. M. Eliashberg} [Invent. Math. 98, No.~3, 623--637 (1989; Zbl 0684.57012)] gave a complete classification of overtwisted contact structures on closed \(3\)-manifolds. \textit{K. Niederkrüger} [Algebr. Geom. Topol. 6, 2473--2508 (2006; Zbl 1129.53056)] gave a possible generalisation of the notion `overtwisted' to higher dimensions. It is a natural question to study the contact homology characteristics of such a contact structure. Recently, it was shown by \textit{M.-L. Yau} [Bull. Inst. Math., Acad. Sin. (N.S.) 1, No.~2, 211--229 (2006; Zbl 1106.57021)] that the contact homology of an overtwisted contact \(3\)-manifold is always trivial. The paper under review advances more towards this direction. It is shown that vanishing of any one of either contact homology, rational SFT or (full)SFT are equivalent. Such a manifold for which these theories vanish is called algebraically overtwisted in this paper.