Exact Lagrangian fillability of 3-braid closures

Abstract

We determine when a Legendrian quasipositive 3-braid closure in standard contact ${\mathbb{R}}^3$ admits an orientable or non-orientable exact Lagrangian filling. Our main result provides evidence for the orientable fillability conjecture of Hayden and Sabloff, showing that a 3-braid closure is orientably exact Lagrangian fillable if and only if it is quasipositive and the HOMFLY bound on its maximum Thurston-Bennequin number is sharp. Of possible independent interest, we construct explicit Legendrian representatives of quasipositive 3-braid closures with maximum Thurston-Bennequin number.

20 pages, 21 figures. Accepted for publication in Bulletin of the LMS