Related papers: Four-manifolds admitting hyperelliptic broken Lefs…
We present existence results for certain singular 2-dimensional foliations on 4-manifolds. The singularities can be chosen to be simple, e.g. the same as those that appear in Lefschetz pencils. There seems to be a wealth of such creatures…
We show that any ruled surface $X$ with $\chi(X) < 0$ admits infinitely many inequivalent Lefschetz pencils of fixed genus and number of base points. Our proof proceeds by building infinitely many inequivalent Lefschetz fibrations on a…
For each connected alternating tangle, we provide an infinite family of non-left-orderable L-spaces. This gives further support for Conjecture [3] of Boyer, Gordon, and Watson that is a rational homology 3-sphere is an L-space if and only…
Associated to every complete affine 3-manifold M with nonsolvable fundamental group is a noncompact hyperbolic surface S. We classify such complete affine structures when Sigma is homeomorphic to a three-holed sphere. In particular, for…
We define branched bending deformations as deformations supported on a piecewise totally geodesic complex of $(n-1)$-dimensional faces meeting along $(n-2)$-dimensional branching loci. These are a generalization of bending deformations, as…
In a previous work, we introduced a simple and systematic method for constructing a positive allowable Lefschetz fibration (PALF) from a 2-handlebody decomposition of a given Stein surface. In this paper, we present a combinatorial…
Every compact symplectic 4-manifold can be realized as a branched cover of the complex projective plane branched along a symplectic curve with cusp and node singularities; the covering map is induced by a triple of sections of a "very…
In this note we observe that one can contact embed all contact 3-manifolds into a Stein fillable contact structure on the twisted $S^3$-bundle over $S^2$ and also into a unique overtwisted contact structure on $S^3\times S^2$. These results…
For any finitely presentable group $G$, we show the existence of an isolated complex surface singularity link which admits infinitely many exotic Stein fillings such that the fundamental group of each filling is isomorphic to $G$. We also…
A hyperelliptic broken Lefschetz fibration is a generalization of a hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibration. We construct and compute a local signature of hyperelliptic directed broken Lefschetz fibrations by generalizing Endo's local signature…
We introduce filtered cohomologies of differential forms on symplectic manifolds. They generalize and include the cohomologies discussed in Paper I and II as a subset. The filtered cohomologies are finite-dimensional and can be associated…
We show that under appropriate hypotheses, a plumbing of symplectic surfaces in a symplectic 4-manifold admits strongly convex neighborhoods. Moreover the neighborhoods are Lefschetz fibered with an easily-described open book on the…
In this paper we study the behaviour of the Lefschetz property under the blow-up construction. We show that it is possible to reduce the dimension of the kernel of the Lefschetz map if we blow up along a suitable submanifold satisfying the…
In [2], the first author constructed the first known examples of exotic minimal symplectic $\CP#5\CPb$ and minimal symplectic 4-manifold that is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to $3\CP#7\CPb$. The construction in [2] uses Y. Matsumoto's…
This is a summary of some of the basic facts about flat 2-orbifold groups, otherwise known as 2-dimensional crystallographic groups. We relate the geometric and topological presentations of these groups, and consider structures…
In a recent article, the authors constructed a six-parameter family of highly connected 7-manifolds which admit an SO(3)-invariant metric of non-negative sectional curvature. Each member of this family is the total space of a Seifert…
In this paper, we develop the theory for classifying all the geometric fibrations of compact, connected, flat $n$-orbifolds, over a 1-orbifold, up to affine equivalence. We apply our classification theory to classify all the geometric…
In this thesis, we develop the theory of bifibrations of polycategories. We start by studying how to express certain categorical structures as universal properties by generalising the shape of morphism. We call this phenomenon…
Since their introduction in 1994, the Seiberg-Witten invariants have become one of the main tools used in 4-manifold theory. In this thesis, we will use these invariants to identify sufficient conditions for a 3-manifold to fibre over a…
We prove that any finitely presented group can be realized as the fundamental group of a spin Lefschetz fibration over the 2-sphere. We moreover show that any admissible lattice point in the symplectic geography plane below the Noether line…