Related papers: Simply connected minimal symplectic 4-manifolds wi…

Let $M^m$ be a compact oriented smooth manifold which admits a smooth circle action with isolated fixed points which are isolated as singularities as well. Then all the Pontryagin numbers of $M^m$ are zero and its Euler number is…

For $\pi$ a finitely presented group, Hausmann and Weinberger defined $q(\pi) \in \mathbb Z$ to be the minimum Euler characteristic over all closed, oriented $4$-manifolds with fundamental group $\pi$. This short note establishes that this…

We describe a technique to study the asymptotics of SL(2,C) invariant tensors associated to graphs, with unitary irreps and lowest SU(2) spins, and apply it to the Lorentzian EPRL-KKL (Engle, Pereira, Rovelli, Livine; Kaminski, Kieselowski,…

We study some symplectic geometric aspects of rationally connected 4-folds. As a corollary, we prove that any smooth projective 4-fold symplectic deformation equivalent to a Fano 4-fold of pseudo-index at least 2 or a rationally connected…

This is a slightly altered version of the authors thesis from 2014. In the first main part we show that the quotient space of a compact, simply connected and nonnegatively curved Riemannian 4-manifold by an effective, isometric…

We introduce a streamlined procedure for constructing small symplectic $4$-manifolds via contact gluing, based on a technique invented by David Gay around 2000. We give several applications of this procedure, which produced results…

Every almost Hermitian structure $(g,J)$ on a four-manifold $M$ determines a hypersurface $\Sigma_J$ in the (positive) twistor space of $(M,g)$ consisting of the complex structures anti-commuting with $J$. In this note we find the…

We prove that the signature of an even, symmetric form on a finite rank integral lattice, has signature divisible by 8, provided its associated linking form vanishes in the Witt group of linking forms. Our result generalizes the well know…

The present paper is devoted to present a unifying survey about some special classes of crystallizations of compact PL $4$-manifolds with empty or connected boundary, called {\it semi-simple} and {\it weak semi-simple crystallizations},…

We observe that, in dimension four, symplectic forms may be obtained via Lorentzian geometry; in particular, null vector fields can give rise to exact symplectic forms. That a null vector field is nowhere vanishing yet orthogonal to itself…

Given a $4$-manifold $\hat{M}$ and two homeomorphic surfaces $\Sigma_1, \Sigma_2$ smoothly embedded in $\hat{M}$ with genus more than 1, we remove the neighborhoods of the surfaces and obtain a new $4$-manifold $M$ from gluing two…

Let $(M,\omega)$ be a symplectic 4-manifold of negative Kodaira dimension. Let $C$ be an $\omega$-symplectic curve, $J$-holomorphic for some $J$ tamed by $\omega$. Then $[C]^2$ is bounded below by a constant depending only on $\omega$.…

We argue that compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds with vanishing Euler number yield effective four dimensional theories exhibiting (spontaneously broken) N=4 supersymmetry. To this end, we derive the low-energy effective action for…

We classify, up to homeomorphisms, the closed simply-connected 4-manifolds that admit a Riemannian metric for which averages of pairs of sectional curvatures of orthogonal planes are positive.

An odd Seiberg-Witten invariant imposes bounds on the signature of a closed, almost complex 4-manifold with vanishing first Chern class. This applies in particular to symplectic 4-manifolds of Kodaira dimension zero.

We present a proof of the fact that a closed orientable 4-manifold is parallelizable if and only if its second Stiefel-Whitney class, first Pontryagin class and Euler characteristics vanish. This follows from a stronger result due to Dold…

This paper studies existence of $n=4k (k>1)$ dimensional simply-connected closed almost complex manifold with Betti number $ b_i=0$ except $i=0, n/2, n$. We characterize all the rational cohomology rings of such manifolds and show they must…

These notes are adapted from two talks given at the 2004 Clay Institute Summer School on Floer homology, gauge theory, and low dimensional topology at the Alfred Renyi Institute. We will quickly review what we do and do not know about the…

We classify small contractions of (holomorphically) symplectic 4-folds.

Let L\subset V=\bR^{k,l} be a maximally isotropic subspace. It is shown that any simply connected Lie group with a bi-invariant flat pseudo-Riemannian metric of signature (k,l) is 2-step nilpotent and is defined by an element \eta \in…