Legendrian Isotopy Research Articles

The Contact Mapping Class Group and Rational Unknots in Lens Spaces

Abstract We determine the contact mapping class group of the standard contact structures on lens spaces. To prove the main result, we use the one-parametric convex surface theory to classify Legendrian and transverse rational unknots in any tight contact structure on lens spaces up to Legendrian and transverse isotopy.

Conjectures about virtual Legendrian knots and links

We formulate conjectures generalizing some known results to the category of virtual Legendrian knots. This includes statements relating virtual Legendrian knots to ordinary Legendrian knots, non-existence of positive virtual Legendrian self isotopies for the class of the fiber of ST⁎M and the conjectural relation of virtual Legendrian isotopies to causality in generalized spacetimes. We prove the conjectures in the case of 2-dimensional M and (2+1)-dimensional spacetimes. We also formulate and prove the version of the Arnold's 4 cusp conjecture for virtual isotopies.

Legendrian links and déjà vu moments

A Legendrian link is called a déjà vu link if its components can be connected by a positive Legendrian isotopy but this isotopy cannot be embedded. This is the contact geometric analogue of a pair of events in a spacetime such that there are déjà vu moments on every future-directed timelike path between them. We construct déjà vu links in several geometrically relevant situations and discuss their basic properties.

Augmentations and immersed Lagrangian fillings

AbstractFor a Legendrian link with or , immersed exact Lagrangian fillings of can be lifted to conical Legendrian fillings of . When is embedded, using the version of functoriality for Legendrian contact homology (LCH) from Pan and Rutherford [J. Symplectic Geom. 19 (2021), no. 3, 635–722], for each augmentation of the LCH algebra of , there is an induced augmentation . With fixed, the set of homotopy classes of all such induced augmentations, , is a Legendrian isotopy invariant of . We establish methods to compute based on the correspondence between MCFs and augmentations. This includes developing a functoriality for the cellular differential graded algebra from Rutherford and Sullivan [Adv. Math. 374 (2020), 107348, 71 pp.] with respect to Legendrian cobordisms, and proving its equivalence to the functoriality for LCH. For arbitrary , we give examples of Legendrian torus knots with distinct conical Legendrian fillings distinguished by their induced augmentation sets. We prove that when and , every ‐graded augmentation of can be induced in this manner by an immersed Lagrangian filling. Alternatively, this is viewed as a computation of cobordism classes for an appropriate notion of ‐graded augmented Legendrian cobordism.

Sheaf quantization of Legendrian isotopy

Let $\{\Lambda ^\infty _t\}$ be an isotopy of Legendrians (possibly singular) in a unit cosphere bundle $S^*M$ that arise as slices of a singular Legendrian $\Lambda _I^\infty \subset S^*M \times T^*I$. Let $\mathcal {C}_t = Sh(M, \Lambda ^\infty _t)$ be the differential graded derived category of constructible sheaves on $M$ with singular support at infinity contained in $\Lambda ^\infty _t$. We prove that if the isotopy of Legendrians embeds into an isotopy of Liouville hypersurfaces, then the family of categories $\{\mathcal {C}_t\}$ is constant in $t$.

Augmentations and ruling polynomials for Legendrian graphs

In this article, associated to a (bordered) Legendrian graph, we study and show the equivalence between two Legendrian isotopy invariants: augmentation number via point-counting over a finite field, for the augmentation variety of the associated Chekanov-Eliashberg differential graded algebra, and ruling polynomial via combinatorics of the decompositions of the associated front projection.

Families of Legendrians and Lagrangians with unbounded spectral norm

Viterbo has conjectured that any Lagrangian in the unit co-disc bundle of a torus which is Hamiltonian isotopic to the zero-section satisfies a uniform bound on its spectral norm; a recent result by Shelukhin showed that this is indeed the case. The modest goal of our note is to explore two natural generalisations of this geometric setting in which the bound of the spectral norm fails: first, passing to Legendrian isotopies in the contactisation of the unit co-disc bundle (recall that any Hamiltonian isotopy can be lifted to a Legendrian isotopy) and, second, considering Hamiltonian isotopies but after modifying the co-disc bundle by attaching a critical Weinstein handle.

Lorentzian distance functions in contact geometry

An important tool to analyse the causal structure of a Lorentzian manifold is given by the Lorentzian distance function. We define a class of Lorentzian distance functions on the group of contactomorphisms of a closed contact manifold depending on the choice of a contact form. These distance functions are continuous with respect to the Hofer norm for contactomorphisms defined by Shelukhin [The Hofer norm of a contactomorphism, J. Symplectic Geom. 15 (2017) 1173–1208] and finite if and only if the group of contactomorphisms is orderable. To prove this, we show that intervals defined by the positivity relation are open with respect to the topology induced by the Hofer norm. For orderable Legendrian isotopy classes we show that the Chekanov-type metric defined in [D. Rosen and J. Zhang, Chekanov’s dichotomy in contact topology, Math. Res. Lett. 27 (2020) 1165–1194] is nondegenerate. In this case, similar results hold for a Lorentzian distance functions on Legendrian isotopy classes. This leads to a natural class of metrics associated to a globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifold such that its Cauchy hypersurface has a unit co-tangent bundle with orderable isotopy class of the fibres.

Augmentations are sheaves for Legendrian graphs

In this article, associated to a (bordered) Legendrian graph, we study and show the equivalence between two categorical Legendrian isotopy invariants: the augmentation category, a unital $A_{\infty}$-category, which lifts the set of of the associated Chekanov-Eliashberg DGA, and a DG category of constructible on the front plane, with micro-support at contact infinity controlled by the (bordered) Legendrian graph. In other words, generalizing [21], we prove augmentations are sheaves in the singular case.

A complete knot invariant from contact homology

We construct an enhanced version of knot contact homology, and show that we can deduce from it the group ring of the knot group together with the peripheral subgroup. In particular, it completely determines a knot up to smooth isotopy. The enhancement consists of the (fully noncommutative) Legendrian contact homology associated to the union of the conormal torus of the knot and a disjoint cotangent fiber sphere, along with a product on a filtered part of this homology. As a corollary, we obtain a new, holomorphic-curve proof of a result of the third author that the Legendrian isotopy class of the conormal torus is a complete knot invariant.

The Bott–Samelson theorem for positive Legendrian isotopies

The classical Bott-Samelson theorem states that if on a Riemannian manifold all geodesics issuing from a certain point return to this point, then the universal cover of the manifold has the cohomology ring of a compact rank one symmetric space. This result on geodesic flows has been generalized to Reeb flows and partially to positive Legendrian isotopies by Frauenfelder-Labrousse-Schlenk. We prove the full theorem for positive Legendrian isotopies.

Sutured Floer homology and invariants of Legendrian and transverse knots

Using contact-geometric techniques and sutured Floer homology, we present an alternate formulation of the minus and plus version of knot Floer homology. We further show how natural constructions in the realm of contact geometry give rise to much of the formal structure relating the various versions of Heegaard Floer homology. In addition, to a Legendrian or transverse knot K in a contact manifold (Y,\xi), we associate distinguished classes EHL(K) in the minus-version of knot floer homology and EHIL(K) in the plus version, which are each invariant under Legendrian or transverse isotopies of K. The distinguished class EHL is shown to agree with the Legendrian/transverse invariant defined by Lisca, Ozsvath, Stipsicz, and Szabo despite a strikingly dissimilar definition. While our definitions and constructions only involve sutured Floer homology and contact geometry, the identification of our invariants with known invariants uses bordered sutured Floer homology to make explicit computations of maps between sutured Floer homology groups.

Legendrian contact homology in the product of a punctured Riemann surface and the real line

We give a combinatorial description of the Legendrian differential graded algebra associated to a Legendrian knot in PxR, where P is a punctured Riemann surface. As an application we show that for any integer k and any homology class h in H_1(PxR) there are k Legendrian knots all representing h which are pairwise smoothly isotopic through a formal Legendrian isotopy but which lie in mutually distinct Legendrian isotopy classes.

The minimal length of a Lagrangian cobordism between Legendrians

To investigate the rigidity and flexibility of Lagrangian cobordisms between Legendrian submanifolds, we study the minimal length of such a cobordism, which is a 1-dimensional measurement of the non-cylindrical portion of the cobordism. Our primary tool is a set of real-valued capacities for a Legendrian submanifold, which are derived from a filtered version of Legendrian contact homology. Relationships between capacities of Legendrians at the ends of a Lagrangian cobordism yield lower bounds on the length of the cobordism. We apply the capacities to Lagrangian cobordisms realizing vertical dilations (which may be arbitrarily short) and contractions (whose lengths are bounded below). We also study the interaction between length and the linking of multiple cobordisms as well as the lengths of cobordisms derived from non-trivial loops of Legendrian isotopies.

Legendrian knots and constructible sheaves

We study the unwrapped Fukaya category of Lagrangian branes ending on a Legendrian knot. Our knots live at contact infinity in the cotangent bundle of a surface, the Fukaya category of which is equivalent to the category of constructible sheaves on the surface itself. Consequently, our category can be described as constructible sheaves with singular support controlled by the front projection of the knot. We use a theorem of Guillermou-Kashiwara-Schapira to show that the resulting category is invariant under Legendrian isotopies, and conjecture it is equivalent to the representation category of the Chekanov-Eliashberg differential graded algebra. We also find two connections to topological knot theory. First, drawing a positive braid closure on the annulus, the moduli space of rank-n objects maps to the space of local systems on a circle. The second page of the spectral sequence associated to the weight filtration on the pushforward of the constant sheaf is the (colored-by-n) triply-graded Khovanov-Rozansky homology. Second, drawing a positive braid closure in the plane, the number of points of our moduli spaces over a finite field with q elements recovers the lowest coefficient in 'a' of the HOMFLY polynomial of the braid closure.

Foliated compressing discs for Legendrian rational tangles

We establish a new framework for diagramming both Legendrian rational tangles in the standard contact structure on [Formula: see text] and the signed characteristic foliations of their associated compressing discs, as well as the technical means by which these diagrams can be used to study Legendrian isotopies of such tangles. We then establish a number of results that represent new progress in the ongoing effort to classify Legendrian rational tangles under a pair of operations known as Legendrian flypes. These operations, while topologically isotopies, are known to produce distinct Legendrian objects in many circumstances, a fact that has been of much interest throughout the study and classification of Legendrian knots.

Virtual Legendrian isotopy

An elementary stabilization of a Legendrian link L in the spherical cotangent bundle ST M of a surface M is a surgery that results in attaching a handle to M along two discs away from the image in M of the projection of the link L. A virtual Legendrian isotopy is a composition of stabilizations, destabilizations and Legendrian isotopies. We study virtual Legendrian isotopy classes of Legendrian links and show that every such class contains a unique irreducible representative. In particular we get a solution to the following conjecture of Cahn, Levi and the rst author: two Legendrian knots in ST S 2 that are isotopic as virtual Legendrian knots must be Legendrian isotopic in ST S 2 :

Universal orderability of Legendrian isotopy classes

It is shown that non-negative Legendrian isotopy defines a partial order on the universal cover of the Legendrian isotopy class of the fibre of the spherical cotangent bundle of any manifold. This result is applied to Lorentz geometry in the spirit of the authors' earlier work on the Legendrian Low conjecture.

Equivalence classes of augmentations and Morse complex sequences of Legendrian knots

Let L be a Legendrian knot in R^3 with the standard contact structure. In [10], a map was constructed from equivalence classes of Morse complex sequences for L, which are combinatorial objects motivated by generating families, to homotopy classes of augmentations of the Legendrian contact homology algebra of L. Moreover, this map was shown to be a surjection. We show that this correspondence is, in fact, a bijection. As a corollary, homotopic augmentations determine the same graded normal ruling of L and have isomorphic linearized contact homology groups. A second corollary states that the count of equivalence classes of Morse complex sequences of a Legendrian knot is a Legendrian isotopy invariant.

Legendrian torus knots in S1 × S2

We classify Legendrian torus knots in S1 × S2 with its standard tight contact structure up to Legendrian isotopy.