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Referee report of the text “Contact surgery”

Eddy Santiago Achig Andrango
December 6, 2018

Jonathan’s text is about Contact Surgery; he begins explaining about topological

cobordism (section 2), then the relation between cobordism and topological surgery
(section 3), with this he introduces symplectic cobordism (section 4) and symplectic
normal bundle (section 5), in order to finally talk about contact surgery (section 6).

The abstract and section 1 (The plan) are not written. Section 2 begins with
the definition of a cobordism and then relates it with Morse theory. The relation
follows since every cobordism posses a Morse function (Theorem 2.1 in the text).
The proofs of Proposition 2.1 and Theorem 2.1 are missing. Definition 2.2 is not
clear, since he never gave a name to the function that satisfies those properties;
I guess he is defining a Morse function in the cobordism. Definition 2.4 contains
a typo, he is defining an “elementary cobordism” and not an “elemental cobordism”,

Section 3 begins with the definition of a surgery of type k. Then he proves the
relation between an elementary cobordism between two manifolds M and N ; and
the fact that N can be obtained from M by surgery. This section finishes with a
result about 3-manifolds and surgery. In Definition 3.1 there is a typo, it must be
M \ ϕ(S k−1 × 0) instead of M × ϕ(S k−1 × 0). Example 3.1 is missing. In Theorem
3.1 he needs to clarify that N can be obtained from M by surgery. In the proof
of Theorem 3.1, the disjoint union must be (M \ ϕ(S k−1 × 0)) × D1 t H instead of
(M \ ϕ(S k−1 × 0)) × D1 t B k × S n−k−1 , this mistake happens twice in the proof.
In the same proof, ×D1 is missing in (ϕ(u, θv), c) ∈ ϕ(S k−1 × (B n−k \ 0)). In the
same proof, he defines two different functions f , one at the beginning and one at
the end. In Theorem 3.3 the conditions, connected and orientable, are missing, and
also, it must be S 3 instead of S 2 . There is a final incomplete Remark at the end of
this section.

Section 4 begins with the definition of a symplectic cobordism and then he pro-
ves that being symplectically cobordant is a transitive relation. In Proposition 4.1,
it must be (W1 , ω1 ) instead of (W1 , ξ1 ), and (M1 , ξ1 ) instead of (M1 , ξ). Also, the
proofs of Lemma 4.1 and Proposition 4.1 are missing.

Section 5 begins with the definition of the conformal normal bundle of an iso-
tropic submanifold L of a contact manifold (M, ξ). Then he shows how the normal
bundle splits in subspaces that can be described using only the Reeb field, T L, and
a compatible almost complex structure J. This is made in order to prove that a
diffeomorphism between conformal symplectic normal bundles can be extended to
a contactomorphism between neighborhoods of the isotropic manifolds. The same
result is proved at the end of the section for strict contact manifolds and symplectic
 2

normal bundles. In the first line of this section, it must be “Let (M, ξ) a contact
manifold” instead of “Let (M, ξ) a contact structure.” In the second line, it must be
“If α is a locally defining 1-form for ξ” instead of “If α is a cooriented structure
of ξ”. In equation (1) it must be:
T M |L ξ|L
NL ∼
= ⊕ ⊕ CSNM (L)
ξ|L T L⊥
instead of:
T M |L ξ|L T M |L
NL ∼= ⊕ ⊥
⊕
ξ|L TL ξ|L
All the proofs of theorems, lemmas and propositions are missing. I suggest to include
the definition of an isotropic submanifold of a contact manifold, and the definition
of a strict contact manifold. In addition, I suggest to change the notation SN (L)
for SNM (L), specifying the strict contact manifold M .

Section 6 contains only six lines where he recalls the proof of Theorem 3.1.

In general, there are some mistakes that make this paper hard to read. Also,
this paper doesn’t achieve its goal, since he only talks about contact surgery in six
lines. I understand that the background of this paper is important, but it is more
significant to spend more effort in the goal of the paper. This article is clearly in-
complete, so I suggest to include in section 1 a paragraph about the importance of
the background given in sections 2, 3, 4, and 5. In addition, I suggest to specify
in general where the manifolds are compact. Another important recommendation
is to be careful about the numeration of theorems, it is confusing when you have
Definition 3.1, Theorem 3.1, and you refer only by (3.1).

Other typos
• In definition 5.1, there are some repeated words.
• “possesses” instead of “posseses” in Theorem 2.1.
• “construct” instead of “contruct” in line 1 Section 3.
• “embedding” instead of “embbeding” in Definition 3.1, Theorem 3.1.
• “Furthermore” instead of “Futhermore” in Theorem 3.1.
• “defined” instead of “define” in line 2 page 3, in line 4 page 4.
• “trajectories defined as” instead of “trayectories define as” in line 10 of the
proof of Theorem 3.1.
• “is well defined” instead of “is a well defined” in line 7 page 4.
• “accomplish” instead of “acomplish” in line 14 page 3.
• “It can be verified” instead of “It can be verify” in line 22 page 3.
• “application” instead of “aplication” in line 16 page 4.
• ... and other mistakes of orthography, I suggest to use an orthographic cor-
rector .