Finite energy foliations on overtwisted contact manifolds

Abstract

We develop a method for preserving pseudoholomorphic curves in contact 3–manifolds under surgery along transverse links. This makes use of a geometrically natural boundary value problem for holomorphic curves in a 3–manifold with stable Hamiltonian structure, where the boundary conditions are defined by 1–parameter families of totally real surfaces. The technique is applied here to construct a finite energy foliation for every closed overtwisted contact 3–manifold.