Related papers: The Unknotting Problem and Normal Surface Q-Theory

Extending Culler-Shalen theory, Hara and the second author presented a way to construct certain kinds of branched surfaces in a $3$-manifold from an ideal point of a curve in the $\operatorname{SL}_n$-character variety. There exists an…

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…

Suppose $M$ is a closed, connected, orientable, \irr\ \3m\ such that $G=\pi_1(M)$ is infinite. One consequence of Thurston's geometrization conjecture is that the universal covering space $\widetilde{M}$ of $M$ must be \homeo\ to $\RRR$.…

The concept of closed trapped surface is of paramount importance in General Relativity and other gravitational theories. However, it is a purely geometrical object. With the aim of bringing this concept to closer attention by the…

We introduce a natural generalization of marginally outer trapped surfaces, called immersed marginally outer trapped surfaces, and prove that three dimensional asymptotically flat initial data sets either contain such surfaces or are…

There are two natural Chern-Simons theories associated with the embedding of a three-dimensional surface in Euclidean space; one is constructed using the induced metric connection -- it involves only the intrinsic geometry, the other is…

We prove that 1) There exist infinitely many non-trivial codimension one "thick" knots in $\mathbb{R}^5$; 2) For each closed four-dimensional smooth manifold $M$ and for each sufficiently small positive $\epsilon$ the set of isometry…

A topological quantum field theory is introduced which reproduces the Seiberg-Witten invariants of four-manifolds. Dimensional reduction of this topological field theory leads to a new one in three dimensions. Its partition function yields…

We define an invariant, which we call surface-complexity, of closed 3-manifolds by means of Dehn surfaces. The surface-complexity of a manifold is a natural number measuring how much the manifold is complicated. We prove that it fulfils…

I review some recent results on four-manifold invariants which have been obtained in the context of topological quantum field theory. I focus on three different aspects: (a) the computation of correlation functions, which give explicit…

We investigate the complexity of finding an embedded non-orientable surface of Euler genus $g$ in a triangulated $3$-manifold. This problem occurs both as a natural question in low-dimensional topology, and as a first non-trivial instance…

Newton's quadrilateral theorem can be phrased as follows. If H is a circle that is tangent to the four extended sides of a non-parallelogram quadrilateral Q, the center of H lies on the Newton line of Q. We prove that the theorem remains…

We study globally supersymmetric 3d gauge theories on curved manifolds by describing the coupling of 3d topological gauge theories, with both Yang-Mills and Chern-Simons terms in the action, to background topological gravity. In our…

We construct a Topological Quantum Field Theory (in the sense of Atiyah) associated to the universal finite-type invariant of 3-dimensional manifolds, as a functor from the category of 3-dimensional manifolds with parametrized boundary,…

In this paper, we study the prescribed $Q$-curvature problem on closed four-dimensional Riemannian manifolds when the total integral of the $Q$-curvature is a positive integer multiple of the one of the four-dimensional round sphere. This…

We prove a compactness theorem for holomorphic curves in 4-dimensional symplectizations that have embedded projections to the underlying 3-manifold. It strengthens the cylindrical case of the SFT compactness theorem by using intersection…

A q-deformed version of classical analysis is given to quantum spaces of physical importance, i.e. Manin plane, q-deformed Euclidean space in three or four dimensions, and q-deformed Minkowski space. The subject is presented in a rather…

A twisted-austere $k$-fold $(M, \mu)$ in $\mathbb R^n$ consists of a $k$-dimensional submanifold $M$ of $\mathbb R^n$ together with a closed $1$-form $\mu$ on $M$ such that the `twisted conormal bundle' $N^* M + \mu$ is a special Lagrangian…

We show that the problem of determining whether a knot in the 3-sphere is non-trivial lies in NP. This is a consequence of the following more general result. The problem of determining whether the Thurston norm of a second homology class in…

We consider the problem of deciding whether a polygonal knot in 3-dimensional Euclidean space is unknotted, capable of being continuously deformed without self-intersection so that it lies in a plane. We show that this problem, {\sc…