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

We desingularize a branch point $p$ of a minimal disk $F_0(\mathbb{D})$ in $\mathbb{R}^4$ through immersions $F_t$'s which have only transverse double points and are branched covers of the plane tangent to $F_0(\mathbb{D})$ at $p$. If $F_0$…

One can define the complexity of a smooth 4-manifold as the minimal sum of the number of disks, strands and crossings in a Kirby diagram. Martelli proved that the number of homeomorphism classes of complexity less than n grows as $n^2$. In…

We study the generalization of quasipositive links from the three-sphere to arbitrary closed, orientable three-manifolds. Our main result shows that the boundary of any smooth, properly embedded complex curve in a Stein domain is a…

Turaev's shadow can be seen locally as the Stein factorization of a stable map. In this paper, we define the notion of stable map complexity for a compact orientable 3-manifold bounded by (possibly empty) tori counting, with some weights,…

We study geometric properties of compact stable minimal surfaces with boundary in homogeneous 3-manifolds $X$ that can be expressed as a semidirect product of $\mathbb{R}^2$ with $\mathbb{R}$ endowed with a left invariant metric. For any…

Every smooth minimal complex algebraic surface of general type, $X$, may be mapped into a moduli space, $\MM_{c_1^2(X), c_2(X)}$, of minimal surfaces of general type, all of which have the same Chern numbers. Using the braid group and braid…

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…

Building on Whitney's classical method of triangulating smooth manifolds, we show that every compact $d$-dimensional smooth manifold admits a triangulation with dual graph of twin-width at most $d^{O(d)}$. In particular, it follows that…

We study the $\mathbb{CP}^2$-slicing number of knots, i.e. the smallest $m\geq 0$ such that a knot $K\subseteq S^3$ bounds a properly embedded, null-homologous disk in a punctured connected sum $(\#^m\mathbb{CP}^2)^{\times}$. We give a…

We show that there are contact 3-manifolds of support genus one which admit infinitely many Stein fillings, but do not admit arbitrarily large ones. These Stein fillings arise from genus-1 allowable Lefschetz fibrations with distinct…

Expanding on work by Conway, Orson, and Powell, we study the isotopy classes rel. boundary of nonorientable, compact, locally flatly embedded surfaces in $D^4$ with knot group $\mathbb{Z}_2$. In particular we show that if two such surfaces…

A branched affine structure on a compact topological surface with marked points is a complex affine structure outside the marked points. We give a proof of an unpublished foundational theorem of Veech, stating that any branched affine…

We show that for any connected smooth manifold $M$ of dimension different from $3$ the restriction of the compact-open topology to the diffeomorphism group of $M$ is minimal, i.e. the group does not admit a strictly coarser Hausdorff group…

We give constraints on smooth families of 4-manifolds with boundary using Manolescu's Seiberg-Witten Floer stable homotopy type, provided that the fiberwise restrictions of the families to the boundaries are trivial families of 3-manifolds.…

We prove that every smoothly embedded surface in a 4--manifold can be isotoped to be in bridge position with respect to a given trisection of the ambient 4--manifold; that is, after isotopy, the surface meets components of the trisection in…

For a closed oriented surface $ \Sigma $ let $X_{\Sigma,n}$ be the space of isomorphism classes of orientation preserving $n$-fold branched coverings $ \Sigma\rightarrow S^2 $ of the two-dimensional sphere. At a previous paper, the authors…

We introduce a new invariant, the \textit{positive idempotent group}, for strongly asymptotically dynamically convex contact manifolds. This invariant can be used to distinguish different contact structures. As an application, for 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…

We consider a fixed contact 3-manifold that admits infinitely many compact Stein fillings which are all homeomorphic but pairwise non-diffeomorphic. Each of these fillings gives rise to a closed contact 5-manifold described as a contact…

These notes are adapted from two talks given at the 2004 Clay Institute Summer School on Floer homology, gauge theory, and low dimensional topology at the Alfred Renyi Institute. We will quickly review what we do and do not know about the…