Engel structures

Original Announcement

The main purpose of the workshop is to review some recent progress on the existence of Engel structures and to stimulate further research by bringing into focus geometrically interesting questions and by making connections to the modern theory of four-manifolds. With this goal in mind, the workshop will bring together people with different areas of expertise: those responsible for previous work on Engel structures, experts in contact topology and related topics, and experts on four-manifolds. Questions of a more dynamical flavor as well as questions pertaining to subriemannian geometry may also be discussed.

The main topics for the workshop are:

• the exploration of all known approaches to the existence of Engel structures, including the recently discovered ones,
• attempts to find a definition of tightness, respectively overtwistedness, for Engel structures,
• discussion of the extension h-principle for Engel structures, respectively of new obstructions to extendability, and
• possible connections to modern four-manifold theory (exotic smooth structures, gauge theory, Heegaard-Floer theory).

Material from the workshop

The workshop schedule.

A report on the workshop activities.

A list of open problems.

Papers arising from the workshop: