3.30 p.m.
Symplectic cobordisms and Lutz twists
Dishant M. Pancholi
ICTP, Italy.
06-10-10

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Abstract

Characterizing the Stein cobordism classes of a contact manifolds - occurring as the level set of a plurisubharmonic function - has been one of the most important steps in Eliashbergs topological characterization of Stein manifolds. After reviewing Eliashbergs characterization we discuss possible obstructions in characterizing symplectic cobordisms between two contact manifolds. We, in particular, use a generalization of Lutz twist to construct contact structures which are not null cobordant as contact manifolds but are null cobordant as topological manifolds in all possible dimensions.