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

Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity is an important invariant of projective algebraic varieties. A well known conjecture due to Eisenbud and Goto gives a bound for regularity in terms of the codimension and degree,i.e., Castelnuovo-Mumford…

Let C be some class of objects equipped with a set of simplifying moves. When we apply these to a given object M in C as long as possible, we get a root of M. Our main result is that under certain conditions the root of any object exists…

Let $F$ be a proper essential immersed surface in a hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ with boundary disjoint from a torus boundary component $T$ of $M$. Let $\alpha$ be the set of coannular slopes of $F$ on $T$. The main theorem of the paper shows…

A new lower bound on the complexity of a 3-manifold is given using the Z2-Thurston norm. This bound is shown to be sharp, and the minimal triangulations realising it are characterised using normal surfaces consisting entirely of…

We develop a min-max theory for the construction of capillary surfaces in 3-manifolds with smooth boundary. In particular, for a generic set of ambient metrics, we prove the existence of nontrivial, smooth, almost properly embedded surfaces…

We define a Heegaard-Scharlemann-Thompson (HST) splitting of a 3-manifold M to be a sequence of pairwise-disjoint, embedded surfaces, {F_i}, such that for each odd value of i, F_i is a Heegaard splitting of the submanifold of M cobounded by…

We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a closed smooth 6-manifold N to be diffeomorphic to a product of a surface F and a simply connected 4-manifold M in terms of basic invariants like the fundamental group and cohomological data.…

We prove an additivity property for the normalized Seiberg-Witten invariants with respect to the universal abelian cover of those 3-manifolds, which are obtained via negative rational Dehn surgeries along connected sum of algebraic knots.…

For each integer q>0 there is a cohomology theory such that the zero cohomology group of a manifold N of dimension n is a certain group of cobordism classes of proper fold maps of manifolds of dimension n+q into N. We prove a splitting…

We revisit the $u$-plane integral of the topologically twisted $\mathcal{N}=2$ super Yang-Mills theory, the Donaldson-Witten theory, on a closed four-manifold $X$ with embedded surfaces that support supersymmetric surface operators. This…

Gluing two manifolds M_1 and M_2 with a common boundary S yields a closed manifold M. Extending to formal linear combinations x=Sum_i(a_i M_i) yields a sesquilinear pairing p=<,> with values in (formal linear combinations of) closed…

We present an algorithm for the following problem. Given a triangulated 3-manifold M and a (possibly non-simple) closed curve on the boundary of M, decide whether this curve is contractible in M. Our algorithm runs in space polynomial in…

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

We investigate constraints on embeddings of a non-orientable surface in a $4$-manifold with the homology of $M \times I$, where $M$ is a rational homology $3$-sphere. The constraints take the form of inequalities involving the genus and…

We consider hyperbolic links that admit alternating projections on surfaces in compact, irreducible 3-manifolds. We show that, under some mild hypotheses, the volume of the complement of such a link is bounded below in terms of a Kauffman…

On certain M-theory backgrounds which are a circle fibration over a smooth Calabi-Yau, the quantum theory of M2 branes can be studied in terms of the K-theoretic Donaldson-Thomas theory on the threefold. We extend this relation to…

We define combinatorial analogues of stable and unstable minimal surfaces in the setting of weighted pseudomanifolds. We prove that, under mild conditions, such combinatorial minimal surfaces always exist. We use a technique, adapted from…

We investigate slicings of combinatorial manifolds as properly embedded co-dimension 1 submanifolds. A focus is given to dimension 3 where slicings are normal surfaces. In the case of 2-neighborly 3-manifolds and quadrangulated slicings, a…

Motivated by a recent result of Y. Lee and the second author[7], we construct a simply connected minimal complex surface of general type with p_g=0 and K^2=3 using a rational blow-down surgery and Q-Gorenstein smoothing theory. In a similar…

We consider homologically essential simple closed curves on Seifert surfaces of genus one knots in $S^3$, and in particular those that are unknotted or slice in $S^3$. We completely characterize all such curves for most twist knots: they…