Related papers: On 3-manifolds with locally-standard (Z_2)^3-actio…
Assume $(M, \omega)$ is a connected, compact 6 dimensional symplectic manifold equipped with a semi-free Hamiltonian circle action, such that the fixed point set consists of isolated points or compact orientable surfaces. We restrict…
We prove that given two compact oriented $3$-manifolds $N$ and $M,$ with $M$ satisfying only a mild hypothesis, there is a hyperbolic $3$-manifold $N'$ arbitrarily ``closely related'' to $N,$ and such that $N'$ does not embed in $M.$ For…
Consider a Hamiltonian circle action on a closed $8$-dimensional symplectic manifold $M$ with exactly five fixed points, which is the smallest possible fixed set. In their paper, L. Godinho and S. Sabatini show that if $M$ satisfies an…
All sigma-compact, locally compact groups acting sharply n-transitively and continuously on compact spaces M have been classified, except for n=2,3 when M is infinite and disconnected. We show that no such actions exist for n=2 and that…
We have been interested in understanding the class of 7-dimensional closed and simply-connected manifolds in geometric and constructive ways. We have constructed explicit fold maps, which are higher dimensional versions of Morse functions,…
We show that a closed, simply-connected, non-negatively curved 5-manifold admitting an effective, isometric $T^2$ action is diffeomorphic to one of $S^5$, $S^3\times S^2$, $S^3\tilde{\times} S^2$ (the non-trivial $S^3$-bundle over $S^2$) or…
We provide a complete set of two moves that suffice to relate any two open book decompositions of a given 3-manifold. One of the moves is the usual plumbing with a positive or negative Hopf band, while the other one is a special local…
A Bott tower is the total space of a tower of fibre bundles with base CP^1 and fibres CP^1. Every Bott tower of height n is a smooth projective toric variety whose moment polytope is combinatorially equivalent to an n-cube. A circle action…
Let M be a closed connected oriented manifold admitting a non-zero degree map to a nilmanifold. In the first part of the paper we study effective finite group actions on M. In particular, we prove that Homeo(M) is Jordan, we bound the…
For a large class of 3-manifolds with taut foliations, we construct an action of $\pi_1(M)$ on $\mathbb{R}$ by orientation preserving homeomorphisms which captures the transverse geometry of the leaves. This action is complementary to…
A free action of a finite group on an odd-dimensional sphere is said to be almost linear if the action restricted to each cyclic or 2-hyperelementary subgroup is conjugate to a free linear action. We begin this survey paper by reviewing the…
We discuss how the global geometry and topology of manifolds depend on different group actions of their fundamental groups, and in particular, how properties of a non-trivial compact 4-dimensional cobordism $M$ whose interior has a complete…
We introduce the notion of round surgery diagrams in $S^3$ for representing 3-manifolds similar to Dehn surgery diagrams. We give a correspondence between a certain class of round surgery diagrams and Dehn surgery diagrams for 3-manifolds.…
Consider a symplectic circle action on a closed symplectic manifold with non-empty isolated fixed points. Associated to each fixed point, there are well-defined non-zero integers, called weights. We prove that the action is Hamiltonian if…
We show that every closed, simply connected, spin topological 4-manifold except $S^4$ and $S^2\times S^2$ admits a homologically trivial, pseudofree, locally linear action of $\mathbb{Z}_p$ for any sufficiently large prime number $p$ which…
Let $M^n$, $n \in \{4,5,6\}$, be a compact, simply connected $n$-manifold which admits some Riemannian metric with non-negative curvature and an isometry group of maximal possible rank. Then any smooth, effective action on $M^n$ by a torus…
Let the compact torus $T^{n-1}$ act on a smooth compact manifold $X^{2n}$ effectively with nonempty finite set of fixed points. We pose the question: what can be said about the orbit space $X^{2n}/T^{n-1}$ if the action is cohomologically…
In this article we propose a metric variation on the C^0-version of the Zimmer program for three manifolds. After a reexamination of the isometry groups of geometric three-manifolds, we consider homomorphisms defined on higher rank lattices…
We prove that any smooth action of $\mathbb Z^{m-1}, m\ge 3$ on an $m$-dimensional manifold that preserves a measure such that all non-identity elements of the suspension have positive entropy is essentially algebraic, i.e. isomorphic up to…
We formulate the Chern-Simons action for any compact Lie group using Deligne cohomology. This action is defined as a certain function on the space of smooth maps from the underlying 3-manifold to the classifying space for principal bundles.…