Stein domains and branched shadows of 4-manifolds (Q861674)

The authors give sufficent conditions for a suitably decorated 2-polyhedron to be thickened to a compact 4-dimensional Stein domain. Informally, there are conditions on the canonical 2-cochain representing \(c_1\) of the almost complex structures carried by the shadow for equipping the thickening of the shadow with a Stein domain structure whose complex structure is homotopic to that carried by the shadow. The sufficient condition is purely combinatorial. They apply this result to show that the distribution of oriented 2-planes carried by a branched spine of a 3-manifold whose canonical 2-cochain is nonpositive is homotopic both to a positive and to a negative tight contact structure. They also exhibit families of hyperbolic 3-manifolds admitting both positive and negative Stein fillings. Another interesting application gives conditions when an embedded surface carried by a branched polyhedron in a complex 4-manifold \((M,J)\) has minimal genus in its homology class.