Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: We introduce a notion of size for an overtwisted disk, defined in terms of the Shelukhin-Hofer energy required to stabilise Legendrians in its vicinity. We compute this size for the standard $3$-dimensional overtwisted disk, which we use to prove that certain explicit product hyperdisks in higher-dimensional contact manifolds are overtwisted (and their overtwisted size can be computed explicitly as well). We then use the overtwisted size to establish a number of quantitative results on contact flexibility. Concretely, we (1) obtain quantitative $h$--principles for Legendrians in the complement of an overtwisted disk, (2) construct overtwisted-at-infinity contact manifolds whose Legendrian Shelukhin-Hofer metric vanishes, (3) estimate overtwisted size under contact products and under products with Liouville manifolds, and (4) derive action bounds for contractible Reeb orbits in closed overtwisted contact manifolds.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Gómez, Álvaro del Pino, Nakamura, Lukas
Language: English
Subfield: Geometry and Topology
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7223871695