Related papers: Connected sum at infinity and 4-manifolds

We give explicit examples of pairs of one-ended, open 4-manifolds whose end-sums yield uncountably many manifolds with distinct proper homotopy types. This answers strongly in the affirmative a conjecture of Siebenmann regarding the…

End sum is a natural operation for combining two noncompact manifolds and has been used to construct various manifolds with interesting properties. The uniqueness of end sum has been well-studied in dimensions three and higher. We study end…

By studying connectedness at infinity of systolic groups we distinguish them from some other classes of groups, in particular from the fundamental groups of manifolds covered by euclidean space of dimension at least three. We also study…

For each rational homology 3-sphere $Y$ which bounds simply connected definite 4-manifolds of both signs, we construct an infinite family of irreducible rational homology 3-spheres which are homology cobordant to $Y$ but cannot bound any…

An end sum is a non-compact analogue of a connected sum. Suppose we are given two connected, oriented $n$-manifolds $M_1$ and $M_2$. Recall that to form their connected sum one chooses an $n$-ball in each $M_i$, removes its interior, and…

We consider open, oriented 3-manifolds which are infinite connected sums of closed 3-manifolds. We introduce some topological invariants for these manifolds and obtain a classification in the case where there are only finitely many summands…

We show that closed, connected 4-manifolds up to connected sum with copies of the complex projective plane are classified in terms of the fundamental group, the orientation character and an extension class involving the second homotopy…

In this paper, we describe geometrical constructions to obtain triangulations of connected sums of closed orientable triangulated 3-manifolds. Using these constructions, we show that it takes time polynomial in the number of tetrahedra to…

For oriented manifolds of dimension at least 4 that are simply connected at infinity, it is known that end summing is a uniquely defined operation. Calcut and Haggerty showed that more complicated fundamental group behavior at infinity can…

In this note we take some initial steps in the investigation of a fourth order analogue of the Yamabe problem in conformal geometry. The Paneitz constants and the Paneitz invariants considered are believed to be very helpful to understand…

In this note we apply a 4-fold sum operation to develop an associativity rule for the pairwise symplectic sum. This allows us to show that certain diffeomorphic symplectic $4$-manifolds made out of elliptic surfaces are in fact…

We develop the Gompf fiber connected sum operation for symplectic orbifolds. We use it to construct a symplectic 4-orbifold with $b_1=0$ and containing symplectic surfaces of genus 1 and 2 that are disjoint and span the rational homology.…

For a closed 4-manifold X and closed 3-manifold M we investigate the smallest integer n (perhaps infinity) such that M embeds in the connected sum of n copies of X. It is proven that any lens space (or homology lens space) embeds…

Under certain homological hypotheses on a compact 4-manifold, we prove exactness of the topological surgery sequence at the stably smoothable normal invariants. The main examples are the class of finite connected sums of 4-manifolds with…

Let X and Y be oriented topological manifolds of dimension n + 2, and let K and J be connected, locally-flat, oriented, n-dimensional submanifolds of X and Y. We show that up to orientation preserving homeomorphism there is a well-defined…

We show that only finitely many links in a closed 3-manifold share the same complement, up to twists along discs and annuli. Using the same techniques, we prove that by adding 2-handles on the same link we get only finitely many smooth…

For most positive integer pairs $(a,b)$, the topological space $#a{\mathbb C \mathbb P}^2#b{\bar{\mathbb C \mathbb P^2}}$ is shown to admit infinitely many inequivalent smooth structures which dissolve upon performing a single connected sum…

The classical Kneser-Milnor theorem says that every closed oriented connected 3-dimensional manifold admits a unique connected sum decomposition into manifolds that cannot be decomposed any further. We discuss to what degree such…

A principal bundle over the connected sum of two manifolds need not be diffeomorphic or even homotopy equivalent to a non-trivial connected sum of manifolds. We show however that the homology of the total space of a bundle formed a pullback…

The mod p homology of E-infinity spaces is a classical topic in algebraic topology traditionally approached in terms of Dyer--Lashof operations. In this paper, we offer a new perspective on the subject by providing a detailed investigation…