Description: This is an introductory course to contact topology. We will give a first glance at topics in contact topology and its relationship with peripheral subjects such as knot theory and symplectic topology. The course will be suitable for advanced undergraduate students and PhD students.Reference:Geiges, An Introduction to Contact TopologyKashiwara and Schapira, Sheaves on Manifold
AbstractContact structures on 3-manifolds are given by a hyperplane distribution in the tangent bundle satisfying a condition called "complete non-integrability". Contact structures fall into one of two classes: tight or overtwisted. Ozsvath and Szabo introduced invariants of contact structures using Heegaard Floer homology. In this talk, I will survey some recent results about the tightness an...