Open books supporting overtwisted contact structures and the Stallings twist (Q996129)

\textit{J. R. Stallings} [Constructions of fibred knots and links. Algebr. geom. Topol., Stanford/Calif. 1976, Proc. Symp. Pure Math., Vol. 32, Part 2, 55--60 (1978; Zbl 0394.57007)] introduced two operations which create a new open book (or open book decomposition) of a closed oriented \(3\)-manifold from another one. One of them is called a Stallings twist, which is a Dehn twist along a certain simple closed curve, called a twisting loop, on the fiber surface of an open book. \textit{E. Giroux} [Contact geometry: From dimension three to higher dimensions. (Géométrie de contact: De la dimension trois vers les dimensions supérieures.) Proceedings of the international congress of mathematicians, ICM 2002, Beijing, China, August 20-28, 2002. Vol. II: Invited lectures. Beijing: Higher Education Press. 405-414 (2002; Zbl 1015.53049)] showed a one-to-one correspondence between isotopy classes of contact structures on \(M\) and equivalence classes of open books on \(M\) modulo positive stabilization. Denote by \((\Sigma, \varphi)\) an open-book of a closed oriented \(3\)-manifold. Here \(\Sigma\) is a fiber surface embedded in \(M\) and \(\varphi\) is a monodromy map. A contact structure \(\xi\) on \(M\) is said to be supported by an open book \((\Sigma, \varphi)\) if \((\Sigma, \varphi)\) is a corresponding one to \(\xi\) on Giroux's one to one correspondence. If \(\xi\) is overtwisted, the open book \((\Sigma, \varphi)\) is called an overtwisted open book. In the article under review the author shows that the following three claims are equivalent: (1) \((\Sigma, \varphi)\) is overtwisted; (2) \((\Sigma, \varphi)\) is equivalent up to positive stabilization to an open book whose fiber surface has a twisting loop; (3) \((\Sigma, \varphi)\) is equivalent up to positive stabilization to an open book \((\Sigma', \varphi')\) with an arc \(a\) properly embedded in \(\Sigma'\) such that \(i_\partial(a, \varphi'(a))\leq 0\), where the arc \(a\) is an extension of Goodman's sobering arc and \(i_\partial(a, \varphi'(a))\) is the boundary intersection number of \(a\) and \(\varphi(a)\), cf. [\textit{N. Goodman}, Algebr. Geom. Topol. 5, 1173--1195 (2005; Zbl 1090.57020)].