Related papers: Robust 4-manifolds and robust embeddings

In this paper we will show that two surfaces of the same genus and homology class in a simply connected 4-manifold are concordant. We will show they are often topologically isotopic when their complements have cyclic fundamental group.…

A conjecture due to Gompf asserts that no nontrivial Brieskorn homology sphere admits a pseudoconvex embedding in ${\mathbb C}^2$, with either orientation. A related question asks whether every compact contractible 4-manifold admits the…

We consider the link invariants defined by the quantum Chern-Simons field theory with compact gauge group U(1) in a closed oriented 3-manifold M. The relation of the abelian link invariants with the homology group of the complement of the…

We investigate certain $4$-dimensional analogues of the classical $3$-dimensional Dehn's lemma, giving examples where such analogues do or do not hold, in the smooth and topological categories. In particular, we show that an essential…

Wall-type stabilization problems investigate the collapse of exotic 4-dimensional phenomena under stabilization operations (e.g., taking connected sums with $S^2 \times S^2$). We propose an elementary approach to these problems, providing a…

We study the homotopy of the connected sum of a manifold with a projective space, viewed as a typical way to stabilize manifolds. In particular, we show a loop homotopy decomposition of a manifold after stabilization by a projective space,…

We study the Disc-structure space $S^{\rm Disc}_\partial(M)$ of a compact smooth manifold $M$. Informally speaking, this space measures the difference between $M$, together with its diffeomorphisms, and the diagram of ordered framed…

Let X be a simply-connected closed oriented 4-manifold and A an embedded surface of genus g and negative self-intersection -N. We show that for fixed genus g there is an upper bound on N if the homology class of A is divisible or…

We use Khovanov-Rozansky gl(N) link homology to define invariants of oriented smooth 4-manifolds, as skein modules constructed from certain 4-categories with well-behaved duals. The technical heart of this construction is a proof of the…

Given an injective amalgam at the level of fundamental groups and a specific 3-manifold, is there a corresponding geometric-topological decomposition of a given 4-manifold, in a stable sense? We find an algebraic-topological splitting…

It is an open problem whether Kirk's $\sigma$ invariant is the complete obstruction to a link map $S^2\cup S^2\to S^4$ being link homotopically trivial. With the objective of constructing counterexamples, Li proposed a link homotopy…

Triple linking numbers were defined for 3-component oriented surface-links in 4-space using signed triple points on projections in 3-space. In this paper we give an algebraic formulation using intersections of homology classes (or cup…

Myers shows that every compact, connected, orientable $3$--manifold with no $2$--sphere boundary components contains a hyperbolic knot. We use work of Ikeda with an observation of Adams-Reid to show that every $3$--manifold subject to the…

It is well-known that an n-dimensional Poincar\'{e} complex $X^n$, $n \ge 5$, has the homotopy type of a compact topological $n$-manifold if the total surgery obstruction $s(X^n)$ vanishes. The present paper discusses recent attempts to…

We present three large families of new examples of plumbed 3-manifolds that bound rational homology 4-balls. These are constructed using two operations, also defined here, that preserve the lack of a lattice embedding obstruction to…

This article is concerned with locally flatly immersed surfaces in simply-connected $4$-manifolds where the complement of the surface has fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}$. Once the genus and number of double points are fixed, we classify such…

Given a closed $n$-manifold, we consider the set of simple homotopy types of $n$-manifolds within its homotopy type, called its simple homotopy manifold set. We characterise it in terms of algebraic K-theory, the surgery obstruction map,…

This paper shows that the complex projective plane $\mathbb{P}^2$ can be realized as the underlying space for a closed hyperbolic $4$-orbifold. This is the first example of a closed hyperbolic $4$-orbifold whose underlying space is…

Iwase and Matsumoto defined `pochette surgery' as a cut-and-paste on 4-manifolds along a 4-manifold homotopy equivalent to $S^2\vee S^1$. The first author in [10] studied infinitely many homotopy 4-spheres obtained by pochette surgery. In…

We develop the theory of the diagrammatics of surface cross sections to prove that there are an infinite number of homology 3-spheres smoothly embeddable in a homology 4-sphere but not in a homotopy 4-sphere. Our primary obstruction comes…