Tight contact structures on the Brieskorn spheres \(-\Sigma(2,3,6n-1)\) and contact invariants (Q314102)

A differential \(1\)-form \(\alpha\) on an oriented \(3\)-manifold \(M\) is called a contact form and the \(2\)-plane field given as \(\ker\alpha\) is called a contact structure if \(\alpha \wedge d\,\alpha>0\). A contact structure \(\xi\) on \(M\) is called overtwisted if there is a disk \(D\) embedded in \(M\) such that the tangent plane \(T_xD\) to \(D\) is the same as \(\xi_x\) for every \(x\in\partial D\), otherwise it is called tight. For a quotient \(Y_\infty\) of \(T^2\times\mathbb R\) there is a family of weakly symplectically fillable contact structures \(\xi_i\). If \({\mathcal P}_n=\{(i,j);\;0\leq i\leq n-2, |j|\leq n-i-2, j\equiv n-i\pmod 2\}\subset\mathbb Z\times\mathbb Z\), then for any \((i,j)\in{\mathcal P}_n\) the contact manifold \((Y_n,\eta^n_{i,j})\) is obtained by Legendrian surgery on \((Y_\infty,\xi_i)\) along a Legendrian knot \(F_{i,j}\) which is obtained by applying \(n-i-2\) stabilizations to \(F\). In this paper, the authors study properties of tight contact structures on the family of 3-manifolds the Brieskorn spheres \(Y_n=-\Sigma(2,3,6n-1)\) and they compute the Ozsváth-Szabó contact invariants for all tight contact structures on the manifolds \(Y_n\) using twisted coefficients. If \(c(\eta^n_{i,j})\) denotes the Ozsváth-Szabó contact invariant of \(\eta^n_{i,j}\), then the authors show that representatives for the contact invariants \(c(\eta^n_{0,j})\) can be chosen such that, for any \((i,j)\in{\mathcal P}_n\), the contact invariant of \(\eta^n_{i,j}\) is computed by the formula \(c(\eta^n_{i,j})=\sum\limits_{k=0}^{i}(-1)^k\binom ikc(\eta^n_{0,j-i+2k})\).