Related papers: Homotopy Inertia Groups and Tangential Structures

We show that the group of smooth homotopy $7$-spheres acts freely on the set of smooth manifold structures on a topological manifold $M$ which is homotopy equivalent to the real projective $7$-space. We classify, up to diffeomorphism, all…

In this paper we study $\mathcal M(X)$, the set of diffeomorphism classes of smooth manifolds with the simple homotopy type of $X$, via a map $\Psi$ from $\mathcal M(X)$ into the quotient of $K(X)=[X,BSO]$ by the action of the group of…

Let $M_{l,m}$ be the total space of the $S^3$-bundle over $S^4$ classified by the element $l\sigma+m\rho\in{\pi_4(SO(4))}$, $l,m\in\mathbb Z$. In this paper we study the homotopy theory of gauge groups of principal $G$-bundles over…

Two 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic if they become diffeomorphic after connected sum with S^2 x S^2's. This paper shows that two closed, orientable, homotopy equivalent, smooth 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic, provided a certain…

Suppose M is a noncompact connected smooth 2-manifold without boundary and let D(M)_0 denote the identity component of the diffeomorphism group of M with the compact-open C^infty-topology. In this paper we investigate the topological type…

Let $M$ be a simply connected spin manifold of dimension at least six which admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. We show that the observer moduli space of positive scalar curvature metrics on $M$ has non-trivial higher homotopy…

Using geometric arguments, we compute the group of homotopy classes of maps from a closed $(n+1)$-dimensional manifold to the $n$-sphere for $n \geq 3$. Our work extends results from Kirby, Melvin and Teichner for closed oriented…

We study two problems concerning the Stiefel manifolds $V_{n,2}$ and their products with spheres. First, we address a rigidity problem: we determine, for most values of~$n$, all self-maps of $V_{n,2}$ that are homotopic to an almost…

We characterise the set of fundamental groups for which there exist $n$-manifolds that are $h$-cobordant (hence homotopy equivalent) but not simple homotopy equivalent, when $n$ is sufficiently large. In particular, for $n \ge 12$ even, we…

We show that an odd dimensional closed manifold with positive curvature cannot contain an incompressible real projective plane in the sense that there is no map of the projective plane into the manifold which is nontrivial on both first and…

We investigate the disparity between smooth and topological almost concordance of knots in general 3-manifolds Y. Almost concordance is defined by considering knots in Y modulo concordance in Yx[0,1] and the action of the concordance group…

We provide a sufficient condition for the nontriviality of the Lipschitz homotopy group of the Heisenberg group, $\pi_m^{Lip}(H_n)$, in terms of properties of the classical homotopy group of the sphere, $\pi_m(S^n)$. As an application we…

In this paper we compute the mapping class group of simply-connected closed smooth manifolds $M$ with integral homology $H_{*}(M) \cong \mathbb Z \oplus \mathbb Z \oplus \mathbb Z$ provided that $\dim M \ne 4$.

Let $M$ be a closed orientable $(n-1)$-connected $(2n+2)$-manifold, $n\geq 2$. In this paper we combine the Postnikov tower of spheres and the homotopy decomposition of the reduced suspension space $\Sigma M$ to investigate the cohomotopy…

For a fixed integer $d\geq 1$, we show that two quasitoric manifolds over a product of $d$-simplices are homotopy equivalent after appropriate localization, provided that their integral cohomology rings are isomorphic.

Let $M^n$ be a closed manifold of almost nonnegative sectional curvature and nonzero first de Rham cohomology group. For any $[\theta] \in H^1_{dR}(M^n), [\theta] \neq 0$, we show that the Morse- Novikov cohomology group $H^p(M^n, \theta)$…

We study the homotopy decompositions of the suspension $\Sigma M$ of an $(n-1)$-connected $(2n+2)$ dimensional Poincar\'{e} duality complex $M$, $n\geq 2$. In particular, we completely determine the homotopy types of $\Sigma M$ of a…

We answer a weaker version of the classification problem for the homotopy types of $(n-2)$-connected closed orientable $(2n-1)$-manifolds. Let $n\geq 6$ be an even integer, and $X$ be a $(n-2)$-connected finite orientable Poincar\'e…

Let $G$ be a compact Lie group acting isometrically on a compact Riemannian manifold $M$ with nonempty fixed point set $M^G$. We say that $M$ is fixed-point homogeneous if $G$ acts transitively on a normal sphere to some component of $M^G$.…

We present a classification theorem for closed smooth spin 2-connected 7-manifolds M. This builds on the almost-smooth classification from the first author's thesis. The main additional ingredient is an extension of the Eells-Kuiper…