A class of non-fillable contact structures

Abstract

A geometric obstruction, the so called "plastikstufe", for a contact structure to not being fillable has been found by K. Niederkruger. This generalizes somehow the concept of overtwisted structure to dimensions higher than 3. This paper elaborates on the theory showing a big number of closed contact manifolds with a "plastikstufe". They are the first examples of non-fillable contact closed high-dimensional manifolds. In particular we show that $S^3 \times \prod_j \Sigma_{j}$, for $g(\Sigma_j)\geq 2$, possesses this kind of contact structure and so any connected sum with those manifolds also does it.