Contact structures with singularities: from local to global (Q6137718)

Contact manifolds are well studied, being the odd dimensional counterpart of symplectic manifolds. In this connection between symplectic and contact manifolds, it seems that singular forms have not been sufficiently studied. In recent years, a class of singular symplectic forms called \(b^m\)-symplectic forms has been investigated. In this paper, the authors take a first step towards studying the geometry and local topology of the odd-sized counterpart of these manifolds, called \(b^m\)-contact manifolds. These singular contact structures are determined by the kernel of non-smooth differential forms, called \(b^m\)-contact forms, which have an associated critical hypersurface \(Z\). The topology of the manifolds equipped with such singular contact forms is related to the smooth contact structures by desingularization. It is proved that a connected component of a convex hypersurface of a contact manifold can be realized as a connected component of the critical set of a \(b^m\)-contact structure. Also, the topology of the \(b^m\)-contact manifolds, depending on the parity of \(m\), is related to that of contact manifolds or so-called folded contact manifolds. The paper ends with some open problems.