Related papers: The 4-Dimensional Light Bulb Theorem

We prove a "gluing" theorem for monotone homotopies; a monotone homotopy is a homotopy through simple contractible closed curves which themselves are pairwise disjoint. We show that two monotone homotopies which have appropriate overlap can…

Examples are given to show that some compact contractible 4-manifolds can be knotted in the 4-sphere. It is then proved that any finitely presented perfect group with a balanced presentation is a knot group for an embedding of some…

We compute the topological simple structure set of closed manifolds which occur as total spaces of flat bundles over lens spaces S^l/(Z/p) with fiber an n-dimensjional torus T^n for an odd prime p and l greater or equal to 3, provided that…

We prove a compactness theorem for holomorphic curves in 4-dimensional symplectizations that have embedded projections to the underlying 3-manifold. It strengthens the cylindrical case of the SFT compactness theorem by using intersection…

We prove two theorems about homotopies of curves on 2-dimensional Riemannian manifolds. We show that, for any epsilon > 0, if two simple closed curves are homotopic through curves of bounded length L, then they are also isotopic through…

The classical Poincar{\'e} conjecture that every homotopy 3-sphere is diffeomorphic to the 3-sphere is confirmed by Perelman in arXiv papers solving Thurston's program on geometrizations of 3-manifolds. A new confirmation of this conjecture…

We show that closed, connected 4-manifolds up to connected sum with copies of the complex projective plane are classified in terms of the fundamental group, the orientation character and an extension class involving the second homotopy…

Minimal surfaces and Einstein manifolds are among the most natural structures in differential geometry. Whilst minimal surfaces are well understood, Einstein manifolds remain far less so. This exposition synthesises together a set of…

Implementing an idea due to John Baez and James Dolan we define new invariants of Whitney stratified manifolds by considering the homotopy theory of smooth transversal maps. To each Whitney stratified manifold we assign transversal homotopy…

Let $X$ be an oriented 4-manifold which does not have simple SW-type, for example a blow-up of a rational or ruled surface. We show that any two cohomologous and deformation equivalent symplectic forms on $X$ are isotopic. This implies that…

Main Theorem (3.3): Let $M$ be a compact four-dimensional manifold either with curvature, positive on complex isotropic two-planes, or self-dual of positive scalar curvature. If $\pi_1 (M)$ admits a nontrivial unitary representation, and…

A trisection of a smooth, closed, oriented 4-manifold is a decomposition into three 4-dimensional 1-handlebodies meeting pairwise in 3-dimensional 1-handlebodies, with triple intersection a closed surface. The fundamental groups of the…

We define an invariant of triple-point-free immersions of $2$-spheres into Euclidean $3$-space, taking values in $l^1(\mathbb{Z})$. It remains unchanged under regular homotopies through such immersions. An explicit description of its image…

Let $M$ be the $6$-manifold $M$ as the total space of the sphere bundle of a rank $3$ vector bundle over a simply connected closed $4$-manifold. We show that after looping $M$ is homotopy equivalent to a product of loops on spheres in…

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…

Let $M$ be a closed orientable 3-manifold with scalar curvature greater than or equal to 1. If $M$ has nonvanishing second homotopy group, then it is known that the $\pi_2$-systole of $M$ (i.e. the minimal achievable area of homotopically…

In this note we study whether specific elements in the second homology of specific simply connected closed $4$-manifolds can be represented by smooth or topologically flat embedded spheres.

For every $k \geq 2$ and $n \geq 2$ we construct $n$ pairwise homotopically inequivalent simply-connected, closed $4k$-dimensional manifolds, all of which are stably diffeomorphic to one another. Each of these manifolds has hyperbolic…

It is one of the most important facts in 4-dimensional topology that not every spherical homology class of a 4-manifold can be represented by an embedded sphere. In 1978, M. Freedman and R. Kirby showed that in the simply connected case,…

A surface in the 4-sphere is trivially embedded, if it bounds a 3-dimensional handle body in the 4-sphere. For a surface trivially embedded in the 4-sphere, a diffeomorphism over this surface is extensible if and only if this preserves the…