Genus zero transverse foliations for weakly convex Reeb flows on the tight $3$-sphere

Abstract

A contact form on the tight $3$-sphere $(S^3,{\xi }_0)$ is called weakly convex if the Conley-Zehnder index of every Reeb orbit is at least $2$. In this article, we study Reeb flows of weakly convex contact forms on $(S^3,{\xi }_0)$ admitting a prescribed finite set of index-$2$ Reeb orbits, which are all hyperbolic and mutually unlinked. We present conditions so that these index-$2$ orbits are binding orbits of a genus zero transverse foliation whose additional binding orbits have index $3$. In addition, we show in the real-analytic case that the topological entropy of the Reeb flow is positive if the branches of the stable/unstable manifolds of the index-$2$ orbits are mutually non-coincident.

arXiv comment48 pages; To appear in Advances in Mathematics