Handle attaching in symplectic homology and the Chord Conjecture
Arnold conjectured that every Legendrian knot in the standard contact structure on the 3-sphere possesses a haracteristic chord with respect to any contact form. I confirm this conjecture if the know has Thurston-Bennequin invariant . More generally, existence of chords is proved for a standard Legendrian unknot on the boundary of a subcritical Stein manifold of any dimension. There is also a multiplicity result which implies in some situations existence of infinitely many chords. The proof relies...