On Legendrian surgeries between lens spaces (Q442762)

The paper under review uses various approaches to discuss obstructions to the existence of Legendrian surgeries between lens spaces. One approach uses Stein fillings. It is well-known that Legendrian surgeries of contact \(3\)-manifolds are realized by \(4\)-dimensional cobordims which are Stein manifolds and consist of \(2\)-handles only. In particular Legendrian surgery of a Stein fillable contact manifold produces again a Stein fillable one. Using \textit{P. Lisca}'s classification of Stein fillings of lens spaces with standard contact structure [``On symplectic fillings of Lens spaces'', Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 360, No. 2, 765--799 (2008; Zbl 1137.57026)] this yields some obstructions. The author then goes on to prove that a Stein fillable contact manifold with a compatible planar open book decomposition cannot be obtained from itself by any Legendrian surgery. This applies in particular to tight lens spaces by the result of [\textit{S. Schönenberger}, Planar open books and symplectic fillings, Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, (2005)]. The second approach is via Heegard Floer contact invariants which are used to prove that no tight contact structure on \(L(p_2, q_2)\) can be obtained from a tight contact \(L(p_1, q_1)\) by a Legendrian surgery on a single knot if \(p_1, p_2\) are coprime, \(-p_1q_2\) is a square modulo \(p_2\) and \(-1\) is not. Yet another approach uses the Thurston-Bennequin framing and known knot surgery results. For example it is shown that a tight \(L(4n + 3, 4)\) and a tight \(S^3\) cannot be obtained from each other by a single Legendrian surgery, or that for \(p>2\) a tight \(L(p, 1)\) cannot be obtained from an overtwisted \(S^3\) by a surgery on a Legendrian unknot, while the (unique) tight \(\mathbb RP^3\) can be obtained from both tight and overtwisted \(S^3\). Finally there are also several results about Legendrian surgeries between overtwisted contact manifolds.