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Related papers: Isotoping 2-spheres in 4-manifolds

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We study how to construct explicit deformations of generic smooth maps from closed $n$--dimensional manifolds $M$ with $n \geq 2$ to the $2$--sphere $S^2$ and show that every smooth map $M \to S^2$ is homotopic to a $C^\infty$ stable map…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2025-05-30 Osamu Saeki

In this article, we construct countably many mutually non-isotopic diffeomorphisms of some closed non simply-connected 4-manifolds that are homotopic to but not isotopic to the identity, by surgery along $\Theta$-graphs. As corollaries of…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2023-02-24 Tadayuki Watanabe

We show how self-referential discs in 4-manifolds lead to the construction of pairs of discs with a common geometrically dual sphere which are homotopic rel $\partial$, concordant and coincide near their boundaries, yet are not properly…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2020-11-10 David Gabai

We show that two closed, connected $4$-manifolds with finite fundamental groups are $\mathbb{CP}^2$-stably homeomorphic if and only if their quadratic $2$-types are stably isomorphic and their Kirby-Siebenmann invariant agrees.

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2021-03-10 Daniel Kasprowski , Peter Teichner

We introduce a new stable range invariant for the classification of closed, oriented topological $4$-manifolds (up to $s$-cobordism), after stabilization by connected sum with a uniformly bounded number of copies of $S^2\times S^2$.

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2026-02-06 Ian Hambleton

We construct a ring homomorphism comparing the tautological ring, fixing a point, of a closed smooth manifold with that of its stabilisation by $S^{2a} \times S^{2b}$.

Algebraic Topology · Mathematics 2023-06-22 Oscar Randal-Williams

We construct the first examples of non-smoothable self-homeomorphisms of smooth $4$-manifolds with boundary that fix the boundary and act trivially on homology. As a corollary, we construct self-diffeomorphisms of $4$-manifolds with…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2025-02-27 Daniel Galvin , Roberto Ladu

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…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2014-10-01 Qayum Khan

We study closed, oriented 4-manifolds whose fundamental group is that of a closed, oriented, aspherical 3-manifold. We show that two such 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic if and only if they have the same w_2-type and their equivariant…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2017-12-20 Daniel Kasprowski , Markus Land , Mark Powell , Peter Teichner

In this paper, we study surfaces embedded in $4$-manifolds. We give a complete set of moves relating banded unlink diagrams of isotopic surfaces in an arbitrary $4$-manifold. This extends work of Swenton and Kearton-Kurlin in $S^4$. As an…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2020-10-07 Mark C. Hughes , Seungwon Kim , Maggie Miller

We show that there exist split, orientable, 2-component surface-links in $S^4$ with non-isotopic splitting spheres in their complements. In particular, for non-negative integers $m,n$ with $m\ge 4$, the unlink $L_{m,n}$ consisting of one…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2023-07-25 Mark Hughes , Seungwon Kim , Maggie Miller

Perron and Quinn gave independent proofs in 1986 that every topological pseudo-isotopy of a simply-connected, compact topological 4-manifold is isotopic to the identity. Another result of Quinn is that every smooth pseudo-isotopy of a…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2026-03-24 David Gabai , David T. Gay , Daniel Hartman , Vyacheslav Krushkal , Mark Powell

We show that the number of double points of smoothly immersed 2-spheres representing certain homology classes of an oriented, smooth, closed, simply-connected 4-manifold X must increase with the complexity of corresponding h-cobordisms from…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2021-01-06 Hannah R. Schwartz

One approach to produce a pair of homeomorphic-but-not-diffeomophic closed 4-manifolds is to find a knot which is smoothly slice in one but not the other. This approach has never been run successfully. We give the first examples of a pair…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2025-05-21 Tye Lidman , Lisa Piccirillo

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the following problem: For a fixed 2-dimensional homology class K in a simply connected symplectic 4-manifold, up to smooth isotopy, how many connected smoothly embedded symplectic submanifolds…

Symplectic Geometry · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Ronald Fintushel , Ronald J. Stern

We describe of the topology of the geometric quotients of 2n dimensional compact connected symplectic manifolds with n-1 dimensional torus actions. When the isotropy weights at each fixed point are in general position, the quotient is…

Symplectic Geometry · Mathematics 2020-12-16 Yael Karshon , Susan Tolman

The unknot U in S^4 has non-unique smooth spanning 3-balls up to isotopy fixing U. Equivalently there are properly embedded non-separating 3-balls in S^1xB^3 not properly isotopic to 1xB^3. More generally there exist non-separating…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2021-04-28 Ryan Budney , David Gabai

Kreck and Schafer produced the first examples of stably diffeomorphic closed smooth 4-manifolds which are not homotopy equivalent. They were constructed by applying the doubling construction to 2-complexes over certain finite abelian groups…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2026-02-06 Ian Hambleton , John Nicholson

We define a 2-normal surface to be one which intersects every 3-simplex of a triangulated 3-manifold in normal triangles and quadrilaterals, with one or two exceptions. The possible exceptions are a pair of octagons, a pair of unknotted…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2009-09-29 David Bachman

We show rational homological stability for the homotopy automorphisms and block diffeomorphims of iterated connected sums of products of spheres. The spheres can have different dimension, but need to satisfy a certain connectivity…

Algebraic Topology · Mathematics 2019-12-25 Matthias Grey