Fillings of unit cotangent bundles

Abstract

We study the topology of exact and Stein fillings of the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of a closed surface $\Sigma_g$, where $g$ is at least 2. In particular, we prove a uniqueness theorem asserting that any Stein filling must be s-cobordant rel boundary to the disk cotangent bundle of $\Sigma_g$. For exact fillings, we show that the rational homology agrees with that of the disk cotangent bundle, and that the integral homology takes on finitely many possible values: for example, if $g-1$ is square-free, then any exact filling has the same integral homology and intersection form as $DT^*\Sigma_g$.