Related papers: Exotic Stein fillings with arbitrary fundamental g…

It is known that every exotic smooth structure on a simply connected closed 4-manifold is determined by a codimention zero compact contractible Stein submanifold and an involution on its boundary. Such a pair is called a cork. In this…

We consider complex surfaces, viewed as smooth $4$-dimensional manifolds, that admit hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations over the $2$-sphere. In this paper, we show that the minimal number of singular fibers of such fibrations is equal to…

The Arakelov--Parshin rigidity theorem implies that a holomorphic Lefschetz fibration $\pi: M \to S^2$ of genus $g \geq 2$ admits only finitely many holomorphic sections $\sigma:S^2 \to M$. We show that an analogous finiteness theorem does…

In this article, we consider an infinite family of normal surface singularities with an integral homology sphere link which is related to the family of space monomial curves with a plane semigroup. These monomial curves appear as the…

We construct an infinite family of mutually non-diffeomorphic irreducible smooth structures on the topological 4-manifold $S^2 \times S^2$.

For each integer $n$ we construct a simply connected $4$-manifold $X$ admitting a smoothly embedded surface $\Sigma$ of self intersection number $n$ such that the complement of the surface has non-trivial fundamental group. This answers a…

We determine the possible finite groups $G$ of symplectic automorphisms of hyperk\"ahler manifolds which are deformation equivalent to the second Hilbert scheme of a K3 surface. We prove that $G$ has such an action if, and only if, it is…

Given an oriented surface of positive genus with finitely many punctures, we classify the finite orbits of the mapping class group action on the moduli space of semisimple complex special linear two dimensional representations of the…

We introduce invariants of Hurwitz equivalence classes with respect to arbitrary group $G$. The invariants are constructed from any right $G$-modules $M$ and any $G$-invariant bilinear function on $M$, and are of bilinear forms. For…

Given a closed smooth manifold $M$ of even dimension $2n\ge6$ with finite fundamental group, we show that the classifying space ${\rm BDiff}(M)$ of the diffeomorphism group of $M$ is of finite type and has finitely generated homotopy groups…

We explicitly construct genus-2 Lefschetz fibrations whose total spaces are minimal symplectic 4-manifolds homeomorphic to complex rational surfaces CP^2 # p (-CP^2) for p=7, 8, 9, and to 3 CP^2 #q (-CP^2) for q =12,...,19. Complementarily,…

For any given finitely presented group G there exists a closed oriented 4-manifold with fundamental group G. What pairs of integers can occur as the signature and Euler characteristic of such a 4-manifold? The first part of this paper…

We prove that a compact smooth 4-manifold admits generalized complex structures of odd type if and only if it has a transversely holomorphic 2-foliation. Consequently, there exist generalized complex structures of odd type on a circle…

We give a simple general method of construction of affine varieties with infinitely many exotic models. In particular we show that for every d>1 there exists a Stein manifold of dimension d which has uncountably many different structures of…

In a small simply-connected closed 4-manifold, we construct infinitely many pairs of exotic codimension-$1$ submanifolds with diffeomorphic complements that remain exotic after any number of stabilizations by $ S^2 \times S^2$. We also give…

We consider the canonical contact structures on links of rational surface singularities with reduced fundamental cycle. These singularities can be characterized by their dual resolution graphs: the graph is a tree, and the weight of each…

We address the question of existence of sections of fibrations in two settings. First, we show that a bundle with base a finite 2-complex admits a section if and only if the inclusion of the fiber is $\pi_1$-injective and the associated…

Some generalizations and variations of the Fintushel-Stern rim surgery are known to produce smoothly knotted surfaces. We show that if the fundamental groups of their complements are cyclic, then these surfaces are topologically unknotted.…

We investigate the structure of the `exotic nilcone' of $F_4$ which is defined by exploiting certain characteristic two phenomena. We show that there are finitely many orbits on this nilcone and construct an associated Springer…

We prove that every finitely presentable group G arises as the fundamental group of an orientable 3-complex obtained from a hyperbolic link complement, by coning each boundary torus of the link exterior to a distinct point. We define the…