Contact handle decompositions

Abstract

We review Giroux’s contact handles and contact handle attachments in dimension three and show that a bypass attachment consists of a pair of contact 1 and 2-handles. As an application we describe explicit contact handle decompositions of infinitely many pairwise non-isotopic overtwisted 3-spheres. We also give an alternative proof of the fact that every compact contact 3-manifold (closed or with convex boundary) admits a contact handle decomposition, which is a result originally due to Giroux.