Related papers: Cork twisting Schoenflies problem

Here we study two interesting smooth contractible manifolds, whose boundaries have non-trivial mapping class groups. The first one is a non-Stein contractible manifold, such that every self diffeomorphism of its boundary extends inside;…

The Andrews-Curtis conjecture claims that every balanced presentation of the trivial group can be reduced to the standard one by a sequence of ``elementary transformations" which are Nielsen transformations augmented by arbitrary…

We relate the Andrews-Curtis conjecture to the triviality problem for balanced presentations of groups using algorithms from 3-manifold topology. Implementing this algorithm could lead to counterexamples to the Andrews-Curtis conjecture.

We propose an induction scheme that aims at establishing the stable Andrews-Curtis conjecture in the affirmative. The stable Andrews-Curtis conjecture is equivalent to the conjecture that every contractible fake surface is 3-deformable to a…

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.…

The ``Flux conjecture'' for symplectic manifolds states that the group of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms is C^1-closed in the group of all symplectic diffeomorphisms. We prove the conjecture for spherically rational manifolds and for those…

In this note we describe a family of arguments that link the homotopy-type of a) the diffeomorphism group of the disc $D^n$, b) the space of co-dimension one embedded spheres in a sphere and c) the homotopy-type of the space of co-dimension…

Four observations compose the main results of this note. The first records the existence of a smoothly embedded 2-sphere $S$ inside $\mathbb{R} P^2\times S^2$ such that performing a Gluck twist on $S$ produces a manifold $Y$ that is…

We study closed, connected, spin 4-manifolds up to stabilisation by connected sums with copies of $S^2 \times S^2$. For a fixed fundamental group, there are primary, secondary and tertiary obstructions, which together with the signature…

This is a survey on known results and open problems about closed aspherical manifolds, i.e., connected closed manifolds whose universal coverings are contractible. Many examples come from certain kinds of non-positive curvature conditions.…

The first author introduced a notion of equivalence on a family of $3$-manifolds with boundary, called (simple) balanced $3$-manifolds in an earlier paper and discussed the analogy between the Andrews-Curtis equivalence for group…

It is shown that the original Andrews--Curtis conjecture on balanced presentations of the trivial group is equivalent to its "cyclic" version in which, in place of arbitrary conjugations, one can use only cyclic permutations. This, in…

We prove a localization theorem for exotic diffeomorphisms, showing that every diffeomorphism of a compact simply-connected 4-manifold that is isotopic to the identity after stabilizing with one copy of $S^2 \times S^2$, is smoothly…

Motivated by problems in topology, we explore the complexity of balanced group presentations. We obtain large lower bounds on the complexity of Andrews-Curtis trivialisations, beginning in rank 4. Our results are based on a new…

We introduce a cohomological obstruction to solving the constant scalar curvature K\"ahler (cscK) equation twisted by a semipositive form, appearing in works of Fine and Song-Tian. Geometrically this gives an obstruction for a manifold to…

Building on the algebraic framework developed by Hendricks, Manolescu, and Zemke, we introduce and study a set of Floer-theoretic invariants aimed at detecting corks. Our invariants obstruct the extension of a given involution over any…

This note has two related but independent parts. Firstly, we prove a generalisation of a recent result of Gay on the smooth mapping class group of $S^4$. Secondly, we give an alternative proof of a consequence of work of Saeki, namely that…

It is known that every compact Stein 4-manifolds can be embedded into a simply connected, minimal, closed, symplectic 4-manifold. By using this property, we discuss a new method of constructing corks. This method generates a large class of…

We construct a compact PL 5-manifold $M$ (with boundary) which is homotopy equivalent to the wedge of eleven 2-spheres, $\vee^{}_{1 1}S^2$, which is "spineless", meaning $M$ is not the regular neighborhood of any 2-complex PL embedded in…

Recent work by Shehper et al. (2024) demonstrated that the well-known Akbulut-Kirby AK(3) balanced presentation of the trivial group is stably AC-equivalent to the trivial presentation. This result eliminates AK(3) as a potential…