Anosov flows and non-Stein symplectic manifolds

Abstract

We simplify and generalize McDuff’s construction of symplectic 4-manifolds with disconnected boundary of contact type in terms of the linking pairing defined on the dual of 3-dimensional Lie algebras. This leads us to an observation that an Anosov flow gives rise to a bi-contact structure, i.e. a transverse pair of contact structures with different orientations, and the construction turns out to work for 3-manifolds which admit Anosov flows with smooth invariant volume. Finally, new examples of bi-contact structures are given and related dynamical problems around bi-contact structures are raised.