The contact invariant is an element in the monopole Floer homology groups of an
oriented closed three-manifold canonically associated to a given contact structure. A
nonvanishing contact invariant implies that the original contact structure is tight, so
understanding its behavior under symplectic cobordisms is of interest if one wants to
further exploit this property.
By extending the gluing argument of Mrowka and Rollin to the case of a manifold
with a cylindrical end, we will show that the contact invariant behaves naturally
under a strong symplectic cobordism.
As quick applications of the naturality property, we give alternative proofs for the
vanishing of the contact invariant in the case of an overtwisted contact structure, its
nonvanishing in the case of strongly fillable contact structures and its vanishing in the
reduced part of the monopole Floer homology group in the case of a planar contact
structure. We also prove that a strong filling of a contact manifold which is an
–space
must be negative definite.
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