On formality of Sasakian manifolds

We investigate some topological properties, in particular formality, of compact Sasakian manifolds. Answering some questions raised by Boyer and Galicki, we prove that all higher (than three) Massey products on any compact Sasakian manifold vanish. Hence, higher Massey products do obstruct Sasakian structures. Using this, we produce a method of constructing simply connected K-contact non-Sasakian manifolds. On the other hand, for every n > 3, we exhibit the first examples of simply connected compact Sasakian manifolds of dimension 2n + 1 that are non-formal. They are non-formal because they have a non-zero triple Massey product. We also prove that arithmetic lattices in some simple Lie groups cannot be the fundamental group of a compact Sasakian manifold.

On continuous families of geometric Seifert conemanifold structures

In this paper, dedicated to Prof. Lou Kauffman, we determine the Thurston’s geometry possesed by any Seifert fibered conemanifold structure in a Seifert manifold with orbit space (Formula presented.) and no more than three exceptional fibers, whose singular set, composed by fibers, has at most three components which can include exceptional or general fibers (the total number of exceptional and singular fibers is less than or equal to three). We also give the method to obtain the holonomy of that structure. We apply these results to three families of Seifert manifolds, namely, spherical, Nil manifolds and manifolds obtained by Dehn surgery on a torus knot (Formula presented.). As a consequence we generalize to all torus knots the results obtained in [Geometric conemanifolds structures on (Formula presented.), the result of (Formula presented.) surgery in the left-handed trefoil knot (Formula presented.), J. Knot Theory Ramifications 24(12) (2015), Article ID: 1550057, 38pp., doi: 10.1142/S0218216515500571] for the case of the left handle trefoil knot. We associate a plot to each torus knot for the different geometries, in the spirit of Thurston.