Related papers: Exotic rational elliptic surfaces without 1-handle…

Starting with the Dolgachev surface E(1)_{2,3} we construct an infinite family of distinct exotic copies of the rational surface E(1), each of which admits a handlebody decomposition without 1- and 3- handles, and we draw these…

Dimension 4 is the first dimension in which exotic smooth manifold pairs appear -- manifolds which are topologically the same but for which there is no smooth deformation of one into the other. Whilst smooth and triangulated 4-manifolds do…

Recently Gay and Kirby described a new decomposition of smooth closed $4$-manifolds called a trisection. This paper generalises Heegaard splittings of $3$-manifolds and trisections of $4$-manifolds to all dimensions, using triangulations as…

The paper describes how known results in Heegaard-Floer homology apply to all known examples of rational blow-downs, and provides several new four dimensional pieces which could be exchanged while preserving some of the Ozsv\'ath-Szab\'o…

Let $R$ be a closed, oriented topological 4-manifold whose Euler characteristic and signature are denoted by $e$ and $\sigma$. We show that if $R$ has order two $\pi_1$, odd intersection form, and $2e + 3\sigma \geq 0$, then for all but…

We present several structural results on closed, nonorientable, smooth $4$--manifolds, extending analogous results and machinery for the orientable case. We prove the existence of simplified broken Lefschetz fibrations and simplified…

A correspondence, by way of Heegaard splittings, between closed oriented 3-manifolds and pairs of surjections from a surface group to a free group has been studied by Stallings, Jaco, and Hempel. This correspondence, by way of trisections,…

Given a spin rational homology sphere $Y$ equipped with a $\mathbb{Z}/m$-action preserving the spin structure, we use the Seiberg--Witten equations to define equivariant refinements of the invariant $\kappa(Y)$ from \cite{Man14}, which take…

A rational triangle is a triangle with rational sides and rational area. A Heron triangle is a triangle with integral sides and integral area. In this article we will show that there exist infinitely many rational parametrizations, in terms…

This paper studies properly embedded surfaces in the 4-ball that are exotically knotted (i.e., topologically but not smoothly isotopic), and leverages this local phenomenon to study surfaces in larger 4-manifolds. The main results provide a…

We extend a construction of Stipsicz-Szab\'{o} of infinitely many irreducible exotic smooth structures of some closed four-manifolds with even $b_2^+$ and fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$. We use the double node surgery and…

We show that simple coverings of B^4 branched over ribbon surfaces up to certain local ribbon moves bijectively represent orientable 4-dimensional 2-handlebodies up to handle sliding and addition/deletion of cancelling handles. As a…

We produce examples of pairwise non-diffeomorphic closed irreducible 4-manifolds with non-trivial free abelian fundamental group of rank less than three and small Euler characteristic. These exotic smooth structures become standard after…

The purpose of this article is twofold. First we outline a general construction scheme for producing simply-connected minimal symplectic 4-manifolds with small Euler characteristics. Using this scheme, we illustrate how to obtain…

Eisenbud Popescu and Walter have constructed certain special 4-dimensional sextic hypersurfaces as Lagrangian degeneracy loci. We prove that the natural double cover of a generic EPW-sextic is a deformation of the Hilbert square of a…

We exhibit the first examples of hyperbolic three-manifolds for which the Seiberg-Witten equations do not admit any irreducible solution. Our approach relies on hyperbolic geometry in an essential way; it combines an explicit upper bound…

Let $X$ be an oriented 4-manifold which does not have simple SW-type, for example a blow-up of a rational or ruled surface. We show that any two cohomologous and deformation equivalent symplectic forms on $X$ are isotopic. This implies that…

We show that the smooth $4$-manifold $M$ obtained by attaching a $2$-handle to $B^4$ along a certain knot $K\subset \partial B^4$ admits infinitely many absolutely exotic copies $M_n$, $n=0,1,2..$, such that each copy $M_n$ is obtained by…

A formula is given for the Seiberg-Witten invariants of a 4-manifold that is cut along certain kinds of 3-dimensional tori. The formula involves a Seiberg-Witten invariant for each of the resulting pieces.

We introduce a method to detect exotic surfaces without explicitly using a smooth 4-manifold invariant or an invariant of a 4-manifold-surface pair in the construction. Our main tools are two versions of families (Seiberg-Witten)…