Non-isotopic transverse tori in Engel manifolds (Q6199680)

Summary: In every Engel manifold, we construct an infinite family of pairwise nonisotopic transverse tori that are all smoothly isotopic. To distinguish the transverse tori in the family, we introduce a homological invariant of transverse tori that is similar to the self-linking number for transverse knots in contact 3-manifolds. Analogous results are presented for Legendrian tori in even contact 4-manifolds.