Symplectic fillings of unit cotangent bundles of spheres and applications

Abstract

We prove the uniqueness, up to diffeomorphism, of symplectically aspherical fillings of the unit cotangent bundle of odd-dimensional spheres. As applications, we first show the non-existence of exact symplectic cobordisms between some 5-dimensional Brieskorn manifolds. We also determine the diffeomorphism types of closed symplectic 6-manifolds with certain codimension 2 symplectic submanifolds.

15 pages, no figures, v3. Accepted for publication in Advances in Mathematics