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By extending and generalising previous work by Ros and Savo, we describe a method to show that the Morse index of every closed minimal hypersurface on certain positively curved ambient manifolds is bounded from below by a linear function of…

For $\Gamma_1$-structures on 3-manifolds, we give a very simple proof of Thurston's regularization theorem, first proved in \cite{thurston}, without using Mather's homology equivalence. Moreover, in the co-orientable case, the resulting…

Let $M$ be a closed, orientable hyperbolic 3-manifold and $\phi$ a homomorphism of its fundamental group onto $\mathbb{Z}$ that is not induced by a fibration over the circle. For each natural number $n$ we give an explicit lower bound,…

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…

We consider amalgamated free product II$_1$ factors $M = M_1 *_B M_2 *_B ...$ and use ``deformation/rigidity'' and ``intertwining'' techniques to prove that any relatively rigid von Neumann subalgebra $Q\subset M$ can be intertwined into…

We use lens-shaped models and the second obstruction to pseudoisotopy to construct a nontrivial diffeomorphism of $M\times I$ where $M$ is the connected sum of $S^1\times S^2$ with a another nonsimply connected 3-manifold $M'$. Then we take…

We generalize presentations of the fundamental group of discriminant complements and arrive at a class of presentations associated naturally with words in the free monoid of the alphabet $\sigma_1,\dots,\sigma_{n-1}$. Our study addresses…

An $n$-strand braid is order-preserving if its action on the free group $F_n$ preserves some bi-order of $F_n$. A braid $\beta$ is order-preserving if and only if the link $L$ obtained as the union of the closure of $\beta$ and its axis has…

We show that for every sequence $(n_i)$, where each $n_i$ is either an integer greater than 1 or is $\infty$, there exists a simply connected open 3-manifold $M$ with a countable dense set of ends $\{e_i\}$ so that, for every $i$, the genus…

We discuss various aspects of "braid spaces'' or configuration spaces of unordered points on manifolds. First we describe how the homology of these spaces is affected by puncturing the underlying manifold, hence extending some results of…

In this paper, we prove that each automorphism of a surface braid group is induced by a homeomorphism of the underlying surface, provided that this surface is a closed, connected, orientable surface of genus at least 2, and the number of…

For $m=2$ and $m=3$ we prove that any connected, oriented, open manifold $M^m$ admits a simple branched covering map over $\mathbb{R}^m$. When $M$ has $k$ ends and $k$ is finite, the degree of the cover can be taken to be $mk$. Regardless…

It is well known that any link can be represented by the closure of a braid. The minimum number of strings needed in a braid whose closure represents a given link is called the braid index of the link and the well known…

Under mild topological restrictions, this article establishes that a smooth, closed, simply connected manifold of dimension at most seven which can be decomposed as the union of two disk bundles must be rationally elliptic. In dimension…

We provide linear lower bounds for the signature of positive braids in terms of the three genus of their braid closure. This yields linear bounds for the topological slice genus of knots that arise as closures of positive braids.

We compute the braiding for the `principal gradation' of $U_q(\hat{{\it sl}_2})$ for $|q|=1$ from first principles, starting from the idea of a rigid braided tensor category. It is not necessary to assume either the crossing or the…

We determine the Zariski closure of the representations of the braid groups that factorize through the Birman-Wenzl-Murakami algebra, for generic values of the parameters $\alpha,s$. For $\alpha,s$ of modulus 1 and close to 1, we prove that…

Let X be a k-dimensional simplicial complex such that the (k-j-2)-dimensional homology of the links of all j-dimensional simplices in X vanishes. An upper bound is given on the (k-1)-th Betti number of X. Examples based on sum complexes…

A link in $S^3$ is called real algebraic if it is the link of an isolated singularity of a polynomial map from $\mathbb{R}^4$ to $\mathbb{R}^2$. It is known that every real algebraic link is fibered and it is conjectured that the converse…

Simon's factorization theorem is a celebrated tool in algebraic automata theory, providing bounded-depth decompositions of words with respect to morphisms into finite semigroups. We develop an analogue of Simon's theorem for \emph{forests}…