Related papers: An infinite order cork

Ruberman in the 90's showed that the group of exotic diffeomorphisms of closed 4-manifolds can be infinitely generated. We provide various results on the question of when such infinite generation can localize to a smaller embedded…

For any finitely presentable group $G$, we show the existence of an isolated complex surface singularity link which admits infinitely many exotic Stein fillings such that the fundamental group of each filling is isomorphic to $G$. We also…

We define a new finite type invariant for stably homeomorphic class of curves on compact oriented surfaces without boundaries and extend to a regular homotopy invariant for spherical curves.

We construct an example of a cork that remains exotic after taking a connected sum with $S^2 \times S^2$. Combined with a work of Akbulut-Ruberman, this implies the existence of an exotic pair of contractible 4-manifolds which remains…

Let $Conf^{lf}_{\infty}(\C)$ and $C^{lf}_{\infty}(\C)$ denote the locally finite infinite ordered and unordered configuration spaces of the complex plane. We prove that both $Conf^{lf}_{\infty}(\C)$ and $C^{lf}_{\infty}(\C)$ are aspherical.…

We prove that for every natural number k there are simply connected topological four-manifolds which have at leat k distinct smooth structures supporting Einstein metrics, and also have infinitely many distinct smooth structures not…

Let $R$ be a closed, oriented topological 4-manifold whose Euler characteristic and signature are denoted by $e$ and $\sigma$. We show that if $R$ has order two $\pi_1$, odd intersection form, and $2e + 3\sigma \geq 0$, then for all but…

The main result of this paper asserts that if a Seifert fibered 4-manifold has nonzero Seiberg-Witten invariant, the homotopy class of regular fibers has infinite order. This is a nontrivial obstruction to smooth circle actions; as…

This note is devoted to a special Fano fourfold defined by a four-dimensional space of skew-symmetric forms in five variables. This fourfold appears to be closely related with the classical Segre cubic and its Cremona-Richmond configuration…

We study the coset covering function $\mathfrak{C}(r)$ of a finitely generated group: the number of cosets of infinite index subgroups needed to cover the ball of radius $r$. We show that $\mathfrak{C}(r)$ is of order at least $\sqrt{r}$…

We construct a tree T of maximal degree 3 with infinitely many leaves such that whenever finitely many of them are removed, the remaining tree is isomorphic to T. In this sense T resembles an infinite star.

Smooth manifolds have been always understood intuitively as spaces with an affine geometry on the infinitesimal scale. In Synthetic Differential Geometry this can be made precise by showing that a smooth manifold carries a natural structure…

Let $X$ denote the `conifold smoothing', the symplectic Weinstein manifold which is the complement of a smooth conic in $T^*S^3$, or equivalently the plumbing of two copies of $T^*S^3$ along a Hopf link. Let $Y$ denote the `conifold…

We show that if the maximum modulus of a quasiregular mapping f grows sufficiently rapidly then there exists a non-empty escaping set I(f) consisting of points whose forward orbits under iteration tend to infinity. This set I(f) has an…

We construct infinite families of topologically isotopic but smoothly distinct knotted spheres in many simply connected 4-manifolds that become smoothly isotopic after stabilizing by connected summing with $S^2 \times S^2$, and as a…

Two criteria for a closed connected definite 4-manifold with infinite cyclic fundamental group to be TOP-split are given. One criterion extends a sufficient condition made in a previous paper. The result is equivalent to a purely algebraic…

Given a germ of a smooth plane curve $(\{f(x,y)=0\},0)\subset (\mathbb K^2,0), \mathbb K=\mathbb R, \mathbb C$, with an isolated singularity, we define two invariants $I_f$ and $V_f\in \mathbb N\cup\{\infty\}$ which count the number of…

A unified summary is given of the existence theory of Stein manifolds in all dimensions, based on published and pending literature. Eliashberg's characterization of manifolds admitting Stein structures requires an extra delicate hypothesis…

We exhibit a smooth complex rational affine surface with uncountably many nonisomorphic real forms.

We prove that there exist infinitely many topologically slice knots which cannot bound a smooth null-homologous disk in any definite 4-manifold. Furthermore, we show that we can take such knots so that they are linearly independent in the…