On the intersection form of fillings

Abstract

We prove, by an ad hoc method, that exact fillings with vanishing rational first Chern class of flexibly fillable contact manifolds have unique integral intersection forms. We appeal to the special Reeb dynamics (stronger than ADC \`a la Lazarev) on the contact boundary, while a more systematic approach working for general ADC manifolds is developed independently by Eliashberg, Ganatra and Lazarev. We also discuss cases where the vanishing rational first Chern class assumption can be removed. We derive the uniqueness of diffeomorphism types of exact fillings of certain flexibly fillable contact manifolds and obstructions to contact embeddings, which are not necessarily exact.