Related papers: Perfect Morse functions and exotic S^2 x S^2's

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…

Given a Morse 2-function $f: X^4 \to S^2$, we give minimal conditions on the fold curves and fibers so that $X^4$ and $f$ can be reconstructed from a certain combinatorial diagram attached to $S^2$. Additional remarks are made in other…

This paper is a study of harmonic maps from Riemannian polyhedra to (locally) non-positively curved geodesic spaces in the sense of Alexandrov. We prove Liouville-type theorems for subharmonic functions and harmonic maps under two different…

We investigate periodic diffeomorphisms of non-compact aspherical manifolds (and orbifolds) and describe a class of spaces that have no homotopically trivial periodic diffeomorphisms. Prominent examples are moduli spaces of curves and…

This paper begins the study of Morse theory for orbifolds, or more precisely for differentiable Deligne-Mumford stacks. The main result is an analogue of the Morse inequalities that relates the orbifold Betti numbers of an almost-complex…

We show that any pseudo-Anosov map that is a lift of pseudo-Anosov homeomorphism of a nonorientable surface has vanishing SAF invariant. We also provide a criterion to certify that a pseudo-Anosov map is not such a lift.

We show that there exist smooth, simply connected, four-dimensional spin manifolds which do not admit Einstein metrics, but nonetheless satisfy the strict Hitchin-Thorpe inequality. Our construction makes use of the Bauer/Furuta cohomotopy…

Let $f:M\to \mathbb{R}$ be a Morse function on a connected compact surface $M$, and $\mathcal{S}(f)$ and $\mathcal{O}(f)$ be respectively the stabilizer and the orbit of $f$ with respect to the right action of the group of diffeomorphisms…

For k at least 2, we exhibit complete k-curvature homogeneous neutral signature pseudo-Riemannian manifolds which are not locally affine homogeneous (and hence not locally homogeneous). The curvature tensor of these manifolds is modeled on…

We demonstrate new applications of the trace embedding lemma to the study of piecewise-linear surfaces and the detection of exotic phenomena in dimension four. We provide infinitely many pairs of homeomorphic 4-manifolds $W$ and $W'$…

We study completeness properties of reparametrization invariant Sobolev metrics of order $n\ge 2$ on the space of manifold valued open and closed immersed curves. In particular, for several important cases of metrics, we show that Sobolev…

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…

It is shown that there are infinitely many compact orientable smooth 4-manifolds which do not admit Einstein metrics, but nevertheless satisfy the strict Hitchin-Thorpe inequality 2 chi > 3 |tau|. The examples in question arise as…

The purpose of this work is to classify, for given integers $m,\, n\geq 1$, the bordism class of a closed smooth $m$-manifold $X$ with a free smooth involution $\tau$ with respect to the validity of the {\it Borsuk-Ulam property} that for…

We will prove a Moser-type theorem for self-dual harmonic 2-forms on closed 4-manifolds, and use it to classify local forms on neighborhoods of singular circles on which the 2-form vanishes. Removing neighborhoods of the circles, we obtain…

On a compact K\"{a}hler manifold $X$ with a holomorphic 2-form $\a$, there is an almost complex structure associated with $\a$. We show how this implies vanishing theorems for the Gromov-Witten invariants of $X$. This extends the approach,…

We study how to construct explicit deformations of generic smooth maps from closed $n$--dimensional manifolds $M$ with $n \geq 2$ to the $2$--sphere $S^2$ and show that every smooth map $M \to S^2$ is homotopic to a $C^\infty$ stable map…

Let $(M,\omega)$ be a geometrically bounded symplectic manifold, $N\subseteq M$ a closed, regular (i.e. "fibering") coisotropic submanifold, and $\phi:M\to M$ a Hamiltonian diffeomorphism. The main result of this article is that the number…

We give an infinite family of embeddings of $\mathbb{R} P^2$ to $S^4$ such that they are mutually topologically isotopic however are not smoothly isotopic to each other. Moreover, they are topologically isotopic to the standard $P^2$-knot.…

We construct smooth 4-manifolds homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to CP^2+6CP^2-bar.