Homology Smale-Barden manifolds with K-contact and Sasakian structures

Abstract

Koll\'ar has found subtle obstructions to the existence of Sasakian structures on 5-dimensional manifolds. In the present article we develop methods of using these obstructions to distinguish K-contact manifolds from Sasakian ones. In particular, we find the first example of a closed 5-manifold M with $H_1(M,Z)=0$ which is K-contact but which carries no semi-regular Sasakian structures.