Related papers: Infinitesimally homogeneous manifolds with prescri…

The following three geometrical structures on a manifold are studied in detail: (1) Leibnizian: a non-vanishing 1-form $\Omega$ plus a Riemannian metric $\h$ on its annhilator vector bundle. In particular, the possible dimensions of the…

Let $G$ be a group and $g$ a non-trivial element in $G$. If some non-empty finite product of conjugates of $g$ equals to the identity, then $g$ is called a generalized torsion element. The minimum number of conjugates in such a product is…

We prove that for every closed, connected, orientable, irreducible 3-manifold, there exists an alternating group A_n which is not the topological symmetry group of any graph embedded in the manifold. We also show that for every finite group…

This survey/expository article covers a variety of topics related to the "topology at infinity" of noncompact manifolds and complexes. In manifold topology and geometric group theory, the most important noncompact spaces are often…

Let $G=H\ltimes K$ denote a semidirect product Lie group with Lie algebra $\mathfrak g=\mathfrak h \oplus \mathfrak k$, where $\mathfrak k$ is an ideal and $\mathfrak h$ is a subalgebra of the same dimension as $\mathfrak k$. There exist…

We show that the homotopy type of a 4-manifold $M$ whose fundamental group is a finitely presentable $PD_3$-group $\pi$ and with $w_1(M)=w_1(\pi)$ is determined by $\pi$, $\pi_2(M)$, $k_1(M)$ and the equivariant intersection pairing…

For a compact connected Lie group $G$ we study the class of bi-invariant affine connections whose geodesics through $e\in G$ are the 1-parameter subgroups. We show that the bi-invariant affine connections which induce derivations on the…

We describe a flexible construction that produces triples of finitely generated, residually finite groups $M\hookrightarrow P \hookrightarrow \Gamma$, where the maps induce isomorphisms of profinite completions…

We exhibit a finitely generated group $\M$ whose rational homology is isomorphic to the rational stable homology of the mapping class group. It is defined as a mapping class group associated to a surface $\su$ of infinite genus, and…

Holomorphic principal G-bundles over a complex manifold M can be studied using non-abelian cohomology groups H^1(M,G). On the other hand, if M=\Sigma is a closed Riemann surface, there is a correspondence between holomorphic principal…

We classify the holonomy algebras of manifolds admitting an indecomposable torsion free $G_2^*$-structure, i.e. for which the holonomy representation does not leave invariant any proper non-degenerate subspace. We realize some of these Lie…

A Q-manifold is a graded manifold endowed with a vector field of degree one squaring to zero. We consider the notion of a Q-bundle, that is, a fiber bundle in the category of Q-manifolds. To each homotopy class of ``gauge fields'' (sections…

We consider the natural A-infinity structure on the Ext-algebra $Ext^*(G,G)$ associated with the coherent sheaf $G={\cal O}_C\oplus {\cal O}_{p_1}\oplus...\oplus {\cal O}_{p_n}$ on a smooth projective curve $C$, where $p_1,...,p_n\in C$ are…

Let $M$ be a locally symmetric irreducible closed manifold of dimension $\ge 3$. A result of Borel [Bo] combined with Mostow rigidity imply that there exists a finite group $G = G(M)$ such that any finite subgroup of $\text{Homeo}^+(M)$ is…

Let $\mathbb{F}_2^\omega$ denote the countably infinite dimensional vector space over the two element field and $\operatorname{GL}(\omega, 2)$ its automorphism group. Moreover, let $\operatorname{Sym}(\mathbb{F}_2^\omega)$ denote the…

We define \emph{piecewise rank 1} manifolds, which are aspherical manifolds that generally do not admit a nonpositively curved metric but can be decomposed into pieces that are diffeomorphic to finite volume, irreducible, locally symmetric,…

We study model geometries of finitely generated groups. If a finitely generated group does not contain a non-trivial finite rank free abelian commensurated subgroup, we show any model geometry is dominated by either a symmetric space of…

We present simple examples of finite-dimensional connected homogeneous spaces (they are actually topological manifolds) with nonhomogeneous and nonrigid factors. In particular, we give an elementary solution of an old problem in general…

Let $N_{g,n}$ denote the nonorientable surface of genus $g$ with $n$ boundary components and $M(N_{g,n})$ its mapping class group. We obtain an explicit finite presentation of $M(N_{g,n})$ for $n=0,1$ and all $g$ such that $g+n>3$.

The paper contains a survey of train constructions for infinite symmetric groups and related groups. For certain pairs (a group $G$, a subgroup $K$), we construct categories, whose morphisms are two-dimensional surfaces tiled by polygons…