Legendrian knots in overtwisted contact structures on \(S^3\) (Q5943833)

A knot in a contact \(3\)-manifold is called Legendrian if it is everywhere tangent to the contact distribution. Two Legendrian knots are Legendrian isotopic if there is a smooth family of contactomorphisms taking one knot to the other one. There are two integer-valued invariants for Legendrian knots, the so-called Thurston-Bennequin invariant and the rotation number. The author deals with the question whether topologically isotopic Legendrian knots in overtwisted contact structures on \(S^3\) with the same values of the Thurston-Bennequin and rotation invariants are equivalent as Legendrian knots. The main result states that if there is an overtwisted disk which does not intersect either of the knots, then the answer is positive. The proof is based on some results describing the group of contactomorphisms of \(S^3\). In particular, the author shows that the subgroup of coorientation-preserving contactomorphisms of an overtwisted contact structure on \(S^3\) is not connected. The author constructs also two topologically trivial Legendrian knots, with the same values of the invariants, and with one of the knots intersecting each overtwisted disk, but which are not Legendrian isotopic; this fact proves that the existence of an overtwisted disk which intersects none of the knots is essential. This result indicates also that the theory of Legendrian unknots in overtwisted contact structures on \(S^3\) differs from that in tight contact structures, treated by \textit{Y. Eliashberg} and \textit{M. Fraser} [CRM Proc. Lect. Notes. 15, 17-51 (1998; Zbl 0907.53021)], as they show that two topologically trivial Legendrian knots in a tight contact \(3\)-manifold, with the same values of both Thurston-Bennequin and rotation invariants, are always Legendrian isotopic.