Related papers: Smooth surfaces with non-simply-connected compleme…

We generalize the mixed tori which appear in the second author's JSJ-type decomposition theorem for symplectic fillings of contact manifolds. Mixed tori are convex surfaces in contact manifolds which may be used to decompose symplectic…

We analyze four-dimensional symplectic manifolds of type $X=S^1 \times M^3$ where $M^3$ is an open $3$-manifold admitting inequivalent fibrations leading to inequivalent symplectic structures on $X$. For the case where $M^3 \subset S^3$ is…

This paper is the first part in a 2 part study of an elementary functorial construction from the category of finite non-abelian groups to a category of singular compact, oriented 2-manifolds. After a desingularization process this…

We show that a minimal surface of general type has a canonical symplectic structure (unique up to symplectomorphism) which is invariant for smooth deformation. We show that the symplectomorphism type is also invariant for deformations which…

In this paper, given a knot K, for any integer m we construct a new surface Sigma_K(m) from a smoothly embedded surface Sigma in a smooth 4-manifold X by performing a surgery on Sigma. This surgery is based on a modification of the `rim…

We introduce certain homology and cohomology subgroups for any almost complex structure and study their pureness, fullness and duality properties. Motivated by a question of Donaldson, we use these groups to relate J-tamed symplectic cones…

Let M be a compact connected orientable 3-manifold, with non-empty boundary that contains no 2-spheres. We investigate the existence of two properly embedded disjoint surfaces S_1 and S_2 such that M - (S_1 \cup S_2) is connected. We show…

We study smooth, proper embeddings of noncompact surfaces in 4-manifolds, focusing on exotic planes and annuli, i.e., embeddings pairwise homeomorphic to the standard embeddings of R^2 and R^2-int D^2 in R^4. We encounter two uncountable…

Let M be a 4-manifold which admits a free circle action. We use twisted Alexander polynomials to study the existence of symplectic structures and the minimal complexity of surfaces in M. The results on the existence of symplectic structures…

We construct a new family of simply connected minimal complex surfaces with $p_g=1$, $q=0$, and $K^2=8$ using a $\mathbb{Q}$-Gorenstein smoothing theory.

We prove that any closed simply-connected smooth 4-manifold is 16-fold branched covered by a product of an orientable surface with the 2-torus, where the construction is natural with respect to spin structures. In particular this solves…

The topology of symplectic 4-manifolds is related to that of singular plane curves via the concept of branched covers. Thus, various classification problems concerning symplectic 4-manifolds can be reformulated as questions about singular…

We prove that many simply connected symplectic four-manifolds dissolve after connected sum with only one copy of $S^{2}\times S^{2}$. For any finite group G that acts freely on the three-sphere we construct closed smooth four-manifolds with…

We give a general procedure for gluing together possibly noncompact manifolds of constant scalar curvature which satisfy an extra nondegeneracy hypothesis. Our aim is to provide a simple paradigm for making `analytic' connected sums. In…

We show that only finitely many links in a closed 3-manifold share the same complement, up to twists along discs and annuli. Using the same techniques, we prove that by adding 2-handles on the same link we get only finitely many smooth…

Friedman and Morgan made the "speculation" that deformation equivalence and diffeomorphism should coincide for algebraic surfaces. Counterexamples, for the hitherto open case of surfaces of general type, have been given in the last years by…

We derive an obstruction to representing a homology class of a symplectic 4-manifold by an embedded, possibly disconnected, symplectic surface.

We construct the first examples of non-smoothable self-homeomorphisms of smooth $4$-manifolds with boundary that fix the boundary and act trivially on homology. As a corollary, we construct self-diffeomorphisms of $4$-manifolds with…

We construct a nonsmoothable Z\times Z-action on the connected sum of an Enriques surface and S^2\times S^2, such that each of generators is smoothable. We also construct a nonsmoothable self-homeomorphism on an Enriques surface.

We construct infinitely many smooth 4-manifolds which are homotopy equivalent to $S^2$ but do not admit a spine, i.e., a piecewise-linear embedding of $S^2$ which realizes the homotopy equivalence. This is the remaining case in the…