Related papers: Compact Stein surfaces as branched covers with sam…

In the spirit of Sullivan's paper "Cycles for the Dynamical Study of Foliated Manifolds and Complex Manifolds", existence of a contact structure on a closed manifold $M$ is shown to be equivalent to existence of an ample $S^1$-invariant…

We classify, up to diffeomorphism, all closed smooth manifolds homeomorphic to the complex projective $n$-space $\mathbb{C}\textbf{P}^n$, where $n=3$ and $4$. Let $M^{2n}$ be a closed smooth $2n$-manifold homotopy equivalent to…

A quantum channel from a system $A$ of dimension $d_A$ to a system $B$ of dimension $d_B$ is a completely positive trace-preserving map from complex $d_A\times d_A$ to $d_B\times d_B$ matrices, and the set of all such maps with Kraus rank…

We discuss an obstruction to a knot being smoothly slice that comes from minimum-genus bounds on smoothly embedded surfaces in definite 4-manifolds. As an example, we provide an alternate proof of the fact that the (2,1)-cable of the figure…

We prove that 1) There exist infinitely many non-trivial codimension one "thick" knots in $\mathbb{R}^5$; 2) For each closed four-dimensional smooth manifold $M$ and for each sufficiently small positive $\epsilon$ the set of isometry…

Let $L$ be a oriented link such that $\Sigma_n(L)$, the $n$-fold cyclic cover of $S^3$ branched over $L$, is an L-space for some $n \geq 2$. We show that if either $L$ is a strongly quasipositive link other than one with Alexander…

We demonstrate new applications of the trace embedding lemma to the study of piecewise-linear surfaces and the detection of exotic phenomena in dimension four. We provide infinitely many pairs of homeomorphic 4-manifolds $W$ and $W'$…

We compute the topological mapping class group of every compact, simply connected, topological 4-manifold. This was previously only known in the closed case. If the 4-manifold is smooth, we deduce an analogous description of the stable…

Esnault-Viehweg developed the theory of cyclic branched coverings $\tilde X\to X$ of smooth surfaces providing a very explicit formula for the decomposition of $H^1(\tilde X,\mathbb{C})$ in terms of a resolution of the ramification locus.…

It is known that every exotic smooth structure on a simply connected closed 4-manifold is determined by a codimention zero compact contractible Stein submanifold and an involution on its boundary. Such a pair is called a cork. In this…

In this note we prove that, for any integer n, there exist a smooth 4-manifold, homotopic to a K3 surface, defined by applying the link surgery method of Fintushel-Stern to a certain 2-component graph link, which admits n inequivalent…

We consider slice disks for knots in the boundary of a smooth compact 4-manifold $X^{4}$. We call a knot $K \subset \partial X$ deep slice in $X$ if there is a smooth properly embedded 2-disk in $X$ with boundary $K$, but $K$ is not…

We introduce the concept of a branched holomorphic Cartan geometry. It generalizes to higher dimension the definition of branched (flat) complex projective structure on a Riemann surface introduced by Mandelbaum. This new framework is much…

Loi-Piergallini, Akbulut-Ozbagci, and Akbulut-Arikan showed that every compact Stein surface admits a positive allowable Lefschetz fibration over the disk $D^2$ with bounded fibers (PALF in short), and they provided constructions of PALF's…

Given a 3-manifold $M$, and a branched cover arising from the projection of a Lagrangian 3-manifold $L$ in the cotangent bundle of $M$ to the zero-section, we define a map from the skein of $M$ to the skein of $L$, via the skein-valued…

We propose in this paper a method for studying contact structures in 3-manifolds by means of branched surfaces. We explain what it means for a contact structure to be carried by a branched surface embedded in a 3-manifold. To make the…

In this article we show that every closed oriented smooth 4-manifold can be decomposed into two codimension zero submanifolds (one with reversed orientation) so that both pieces are exact Kahler manifolds with strictly pseudoconvex…

We classify branched immersed disks in space forms with non-zero parallel mean curvature vector and non-orthogonal constant contact angle along the boundary in 4-dimensional space form. For higher codimensional case, we prove a codimension…

It is known that a limit $(M^n_j,g_j)\to (X^k,d)$ of manifolds $M_j$ with uniform lower bounds on Ricci curvature must be $k$-rectifiable for some unique $\dim X:= k\leq n = \dim M_j$. It is also known that if $k=n$, then $X^n$ is a…

By a construction of Berstein and Edmonds every proper branched cover f between manifolds is a factor of a branched covering orbit map from a locally connected and locally compact Hausdorff space called the monodromy space of f to the…