On the topology of fillings of contact manifolds and applications (Q662440)

The authors consider symplectic fillings \((W,\omega)\) of a closed contact manifold \((\Sigma,\xi)\) that appear as hypersurfaces of contact type in a subcritical Stein manifold. The dimension of \((\Sigma,\xi)\) is assumed to be at least \(3\). An important question in symplectic geometry is the classification of all possible fillings of a given contact manifold. In the case when \((W,\omega)\) is symplectically aspherical and either \(\Sigma\) is simply connected or \(H_2(W,\Sigma)=0\) the authors show that the map \( H_k(\Sigma;\mathbb F)\longrightarrow H_k(W;\mathbb F) \) induced by the inclusion is onto in all degrees \(k\) and for all coefficient fields \(\mathbb F\). In order to obtain the result, the authors study the evaluation map on a moduli space that consists of holomorphic spheres with one marked point and three geometrically fixed marked points. The symplectic manifold, in which the holomorphic analysis takes place, is obtained by a compactification of the gluing result of \((W,\omega)\) and the unbounded complement of \(\Sigma\) in the subcritical Stein manifold. Many applications are given. For example if the subcritical Stein manifold equals \(\mathbb C^n\) the Betti numbers of any symplectically aspherical symplectic filling of \((\Sigma,\xi)\) are uniquely determined and can be expressed in terms of the Betti numbers of \(\Sigma\). Interesting relations to the symplectic homology of \((W,\omega)\), resp., to the contact homology of \((\Sigma,\xi)\) are drawn.