English

Normal-Euler excess for disjoint nonorientable surfaces in a closed $4$-manifold

Geometric Topology 2026-04-07 v1 Differential Geometry

Abstract

Let MM be a closed connected oriented topological 44-manifold. We prove that if F1,,FrMF_1,\dots,F_r\subset M are pairwise disjoint connected locally flat topologically embedded nonorientable surfaces with nonorientable genera gig_i, same-sign twisted normal Euler numbers eie_i, and [F1]++[Fr]=0H2(M;\F2), [F_1]+\cdots+[F_r]=0\in H_2(M;\F_2), then the normal-Euler excess i=1r(\absei2gi) \sum_{i=1}^r \bigl(\abs{e_i}-2g_i\bigr) is bounded above by a constant depending only on MM. Thus same-sign mod-22-null families of disjoint nonorientable surfaces in a fixed ambient 44-manifold have uniformly bounded total excess over Massey's S4S^4 bound. The proof combines a tubing construction with the signature and Euler-characteristic formulas for 22-fold branched covers. As corollaries, every closed oriented topological 44-manifold contains only finitely many pairwise disjoint locally flat topologically embedded copies of \RP2\RP^2 with \abse>2\abs{e}>2, and only finitely many pairwise disjoint tubular neighborhoods modeled on real 22-plane bundles over \RP2\RP^2 whose total spaces are orientable and whose twisted Euler numbers have absolute value greater than 22. When MM is a homology 44-sphere, the ambient error term vanishes, and the theorem recovers Massey's sharp inequality \abse(F)2g(F)\abs{e(F)}\le 2g(F) for nonorientable surfaces in S4S^4.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.03812,
  title  = {Normal-Euler excess for disjoint nonorientable surfaces in a closed $4$-manifold},
  author = {Bennett Chow and Michael Freedman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.03812},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:54:00.585Z