EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Convex contact handle decompositions
Speaker: Kevin Sackel
Speaker Info: MIT
Brief Description: Main talk
Special Note:
Abstract:

Analogous to Weinstein structures in symplectic geometry, there is a notion of convex structures in contact geometry. We discuss an explicit surgery theory for these contact manifolds with convex structures, showing that they decompose naturally into handles. We also explore the relationships between these handle decompositions and Weinstein open books, proving as a corollary that every closed contact manifold has a convex structure.