Paper detail

On uniqueness of symplectic fillings of links of some surface singularities

We consider the canonical contact structures on links of rational surface singularities with reduced fundamental cycle. These singularities can be characterized by their dual resolution graphs: the graph is a tree, and the weight of each vertex is no greater than its negative valency. In a joint work with Starkston, we previously showed that if the weight of each vertex in the graph is at most -5, the contact structure has a unique symplectic filling (up to symplectic deformation and blow-up). The proof was based on a symplectic analog of de Jong-van Straten's description of smoothings of these singularities. In this paper, we give a short self-contained proof of uniqueness of fillings, via analysis of positive monodromy factorizations for planar open books supporting these contact structures.