On symplectic fillings of spinal open book decompositions II: Holomorphic curves and classification

Abstract

In this second paper of a two-part series, we prove that whenever a contact 3-manifold admits a uniform spinal open book decomposition with planar pages, its (weak, strong and/or exact) symplectic and Stein fillings can be classified up to deformation equivalence in terms of diffeomorphism classes of Lefschetz fibrations. This extends previous results of the third author to a much wider class of contact manifolds, which we illustrate here by classifying the strong and Stein fillings of all oriented circle bundles with non-tangential $S^1$-invariant contact structures. Further results include new vanishing criteria for the ECH contact invariant and algebraic torsion in SFT, classification of fillings for certain non-orientable circle bundles, and a general "symplectic quasiflexibility" result about deformation classes of Stein structures in real dimension four.