Contact handles, duality, and sutured Floer homology

Abstract: We give an explicit construction of the Honda--Kazez--Mati'c gluing maps in terms of contact handles. We use this to prove a duality result for turning a sutured manifold cobordism around, and to compute the trace in the sutured Floer TQFT. We also show that the decorated link cobordism maps on the hat version of link Floer homology defined by the first author via sutured manifold cobordisms and by the second author via elementary cobordisms agree.

Review text

This paper provides an explicit construction of gluing maps in sutured Floer homology (SFH), in terms of contact handles, and then uses it to prove results about sutured Floer TQFT. Sutured Floer homology was introduced by \textit{A. Juhász} in [Algebr. Geom. Topol. 6, 1429--1457 (2006; Zbl 1129.57039)]. A generalisation of certain versions of Heegaard Floer homology for links and closed 3-manifolds, it assigns to a balanced sutured 3-manifold \((M, \gamma)\) an \(\mathbb{F}_2\)-vector space \(SFH(M, \gamma)\). Honda, Kazez and Matić [\textit{K. Honda} et al., ``Contact structures, sutured Floer homology and TQFT, Preprint, \url{arXiv:0807.2431}] showed that for an inclusion \((M, \gamma) \subseteq (M', \gamma')\), with \(M\) lying in the interior \(\text{Int}(M)\) of \(M'\), and a contact structure on \((M' \setminus \text{Int}(M), \gamma \cup \gamma')\), there is a gluing map \[ \Phi_\xi \colon SFH(-M, -\gamma) \rightarrow SFH(-M', -\gamma'). \] One of the main results of this paper is a new, equivalent construction of the gluing map, based on contact handle attachments. For each contact handle, the authors give a simple description of the corresponding gluing map in terms of Heegaard diagrams. The other main results of the paper come from applying this construction to the sutured Floer TQFT defined by \textit{A. Juhász} in [Adv. Math. 299, 940--1038 (2016; Zbl 1358.57021)]. This TQFT is a functor on a suitable cobordism category for balanced sutured manifolds \((M, \gamma)\). A morphism in this category is a \emph{balanced cobordism} from \((M_0, \gamma_0)\) to \((M_1, \gamma_1)\), which consists of a triple \(\mathcal{W} = (W, Z, [\xi])\). Here \(W\) is a 4-manifold with boundary and corners, \(Z\) is a codimension-0 submanifold of \(\partial W\) satisfying \(\partial W \setminus \text{Int} Z = - M_0 \sqcup M_1\), and \(\xi\) is a contact structure on \((Z, \gamma_0 \cup \gamma_1)\). To such a cobordism is associated a map \[ F_{\mathcal{W}} \colon SFH(M_0, \gamma_0) \rightarrow SFH(M_1, \gamma_1) \] constructed out of contact gluing maps and 4-dimensional handle maps. The first main theorem on TQFT concerns trivial cobordisms in this category. From an object \((M, \gamma)\), a trivial cobordism is given by \((W,Z,\xi) = (I \times M, -I \times \partial M, \xi_{I \times \partial M})\), where the contact structure \(\xi_{I \times \partial M}\) is \(I\)-invariant on \(-I \times \partial M\). Depending on one's perspective, this can be regarded as a \emph{trace} cobordism from \((M, \gamma) \sqcup (-M, \gamma)\) to \(\emptyset\), or as a \emph{cotrace} cobordism from \(\emptyset\) to \((M, \gamma) \sqcup (-M, \gamma)\). The authors show (Theorem 1.1) that the map induced by the trace cobordism \[ SFH(M, \gamma) \otimes SFH(-M, \gamma) \rightarrow \mathbb{F}_2 \] is simply the canonical trace map obtained by evaluating cohomology on homology; and similarly, the map induced by the cotrace cobordism is the canonical cotrace map \[ \mathbb{F}_2 \rightarrow SFH(-M, \gamma) \otimes SFH(M, \gamma). \] Theorem 1.1 relies on a deep technical result (Theorem 1.2) about sutured triple diagrams \((\Sigma, \mathbf{\alpha}, \mathbf{\beta}, \mathbf{\gamma})\). Such a diagram yields \emph{three} sutured Heegaard diagrams \((\Sigma, \mathbf{\alpha}, \mathbf{\beta})\), \((\Sigma, \mathbf{\beta}, \mathbf{\gamma})\) and \((\Sigma, \mathbf{\alpha}, \mathbf{\gamma})\) for manifolds \((M_{\mathbf{\alpha}, \mathbf{\beta}}, \gamma_{\mathbf{\alpha}, \mathbf{\beta}})\), \((M_{\mathbf{\beta}, \mathbf{\gamma}}, \gamma_{\mathbf{\beta},\mathbf{\gamma}})\) and \((M_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\gamma}},\gamma_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\gamma}})\) respectively; moreover there is an associated cobordism \(\mathcal{W}_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\beta},\mathbf{\gamma}}\) from \((M_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\beta}}, \gamma_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\beta}}) \sqcup (M_{\mathbf{\beta},\mathbf{\gamma}},\gamma_{\mathbf{\beta},\mathbf{\gamma}})\) to \((M_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\gamma}},\gamma_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\gamma}})\). In Theorem 1.2 the authors show that the cobordism map \[ F_{\mathcal{W}_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\beta},\mathbf{\gamma}}} \colon CF(\Sigma, \mathbf{\alpha}, \mathbf{\beta}) \otimes CF(\Sigma, \mathbf{\beta}, \mathbf{\gamma}) \rightarrow CF(\Sigma, \mathbf{\alpha}, \mathbf{\beta}, \mathbf{\gamma}) \] is chain homotopic to the map counting holomorphic triangles in the triple diagram \((\Sigma, \mathbf{\alpha}, \mathbf{\beta}, \mathbf{\gamma})\). The next main result (Theorem 1.3) shows a form of duality: if one turns around a balanced cobordism, the induced map is dualised with respect to the trace pairing. Finally, the authors unify previous results regarding decorated link cobordisms, a special case of sutured manifold cobordisms. In previous work, each of the authors separately defined maps on SFH induced by decorated link cobordisms. Here, they prove that their two constructions are equal (Theorem 1.4). The arguments require numerous involved constructions in 3 and 4 dimensions, with details that are sometimes formidable but always well presented. The paper roughly proceeds as follows. After introducing their results (Section 1) and giving some technical results about handle and triangle maps and stabilisations (Section 2), the authors give a definition of the gluing map \(\Phi_\xi\) in Section 3. The construction of \(\Phi_\xi\) uses a contact cell decomposition of \(\xi\) (Section 3.2) adapted to sutured cell decompositions of the boundary surfaces (Section 3.1), although \(\Phi_\xi\) is shown to be independent of the choices involved (Section 3.5). The definition (given in Section 3.4) applies contact handle maps (Section 3.3) alongside other constructions maintaining invariant neighbourhoods of \(\partial M\) and \(\partial M'\). The authors then turn to partial open book decompositions, on which the Honda-Kazez-Matić construction is based, and their relationship with sutured Heegaard diagrams (Section 4.1) and contact handles (Section 4.2). Positive stabilisations of partial open books are shown to correspond to pairs of cancelling index 1 and 2 contact handles (Section 4.3). The gluing map \(\Phi_\xi\) is shown to have various attractive properties. Gluing on a copy of \(\partial M \times I\) with an \(I\)-invariant contact structure induces a map which is effectively the identity (Section 5.1). A contact handle attachment in the usual sense does not quite fit the situation of \(M\), \(M'\) and \(\xi\) required for a gluing map, so the authors define a new type of handle, a ``Morse-type contact handle, which does (Section 5.2), and for which \(\Phi_\xi\) is a contact handle map (Proposition 5.6). Composing inclusions \((M, \gamma) \subset (M', \gamma') \subset (M, \gamma)\) yields a composition of gluing maps, giving a type of functoriality (Section 5.3). The authors can then show their gluing map is equivalent to that of Honda-Kazez-Matić (Section 5.4), by relating various contact handle constructions to ones involving partial open book decompositions. The authors then turn to TQFT in Section 6, discussing trace pairings (Section 6.1) and maps induced by sutured cobordisms (Section 6.2). A general cobordism \(\mathcal{W}\) is decomposed into a \emph{boundary} cobordism \(\mathcal{W}^b\) and a \emph{special} cobordism \(\mathcal{W}^s\), where roughly the former includes the contact structure \(\xi\), and the latter includes the 4-dimensional topology. It is shown that the boundary cobordism induces the contact gluing map \(\Phi_{-\xi}\), so that \(F_{\mathcal{W}} = F_{\mathcal{W}^s} \circ \Phi_{-\xi}\) (Proposition 6.5). The authors can then consider duality in Section 6.3. Using previous work of the first author, and a careful analysis of the various type of contact handle attachments and their duals, they prove the main duality Theorem 1.3. In Section 7 the authors turn to sutured triple diagrams \((\Sigma, \mathbf{\alpha}, \mathbf{\beta}, \mathbf{\gamma})\) and the related cobordism \(\mathcal{W}_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\beta},\mathbf{\gamma}}\). Calculating \(F_{\mathcal{W}_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\beta},\mathbf{\gamma}}}\) requires numerous involved 3- and 4-dimensional constructions, along the way correcting a previous construction of the contact structure \(\xi_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\beta},\mathbf{\gamma}}\) in the cobordism \(\mathcal{W}_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\beta},\mathbf{\gamma}}\). A trace cobordism can then be expressed as a cobordism \(\mathcal{W}_{\mathbf{\alpha},\mathbf{\beta},\mathbf{\beta}}\), composed with another cobordism \(\mathcal{W}_{\mathbf{\alpha}}\) (Lemma 8.2), whose map can be computed explicitly (Proposition 8.3). Combining this with a count of triangles, the authors are able to show that the resulting maps on SFH is as claimed in Theorem 1.1. In the final Section 9 the authors discuss link cobordisms, recall their previous separate individual constructions of link cobordism maps, and demonstrate the equality of these constructions.

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