Related papers: Bridge trisections in $\mathbb{CP}^2$ and the Thom…
Every embedded surface $\mathcal{K}$ in the 4-sphere admits a bridge trisection, a decomposition of $(S^4,\mathcal{K})$ into three simple pieces. In this case, the surface $\mathcal{K}$ is determined by an embedded 1-complex, called the…
We introduce and study bridge decompositions for 3-manifolds embedded in the 5-sphere. These generalize both the classical notion of bridge position for knots in the 3-sphere and the bridge trisections of surfaces in the 4-sphere due to…
The purpose of the present paper is twofold: firstly to extend to non-orientable compact 4-manifolds the notion of gem-induced trisection, directly obtained from colored triangulations (or, equivalently, from colored graphs encoding them,…
This is an expository account of the author's collaboration with Rob Kirby leading up to the theory of trisections of smooth 4-manifolds. This article was written for inclusion in an upcoming issue of Celebratio Mathematica dedicated to Rob…
Trisections of closed 4-manifolds, first defined and studied by Gay and Kirby, have proved to be a useful tool in the systematic analysis of 4-manifolds via handlebodies. Subsequent work of Abrams, Gay, and Kirby established a connection…
We study the intersection theory of punctured pseudoholomorphic curves in $4$-dimensional symplectic cobordisms. We first study the local intersection properties of such curves at the punctures. We then use this to develop topological…
We review the main achievements regarding the interactions between gem theory (which makes use of edge-colored graphs to represent PL-manifolds of arbitrary dimension) and both the classical representation of PL 4-manifolds via Kirby…
We extend the theory of relative trisections of smooth, compact, oriented $4$-manifolds with connected boundary given by Gay and Kirby to include $4$-manifolds with an arbitrary number of boundary components. Additionally, we provide…
We prove that every symplectic 4-manifold admits a trisection that is compatible with the symplectic structure in the sense that the symplectic form induces a Weinstein structure on each of the three sectors of the trisection. Along the…
A multisection of a 4-manifold is a decomposition into 1-handlebodies intersecting pairwise along 3-dimensional handlebodies or along a central closed surface; this generalizes the Gay-Kirby trisections. We show how to compute the twisted…
We demonstrate that the geometric, topological, and combinatorial complexities of certain surfaces in $\mathbb{CP}^2$ are closely related: We prove that a positive genus surface $\mathcal{K}$ in $\mathbb{CP}^2$ that minimizes genus in its…
Algorithms that decompose a manifold into simple pieces reveal the geometric and topological structure of the manifold, showing how complicated structures are constructed from simple building blocks. This note describes a way to…
The idea of studying trisections of closed smooth $4$-manifolds via (singular) triangulations, endowed with a suitable vertex-labelling by three colors, is due to Bell, Hass, Rubinstein and Tillmann, and has been applied by Spreer and…
We establish a correspondence between trisections of smooth, compact, oriented $4$--manifolds with connected boundary and diagrams describing these trisected $4$--manifolds. Such a diagram comes in the form of a compact, oriented surface…
In algebraic geometry, trigonal curves can always be embedded into Hirzebruch surfaces. In tropical geometry, the notion of trigonality does not have a unique translation. We focus on the characterization in terms of the existence of a…
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a version of singular homology based on smooth mappings of manifolds with corners. Although variants of such a theory exists in the literature, we felt that certain points were not adequately…
Kirby and Thompson introduced a length of a trisection. They also defined the length of a 4-manifold as the minimum of length among all lengths of trisection of a 4-manifold. In this paper, we consider trisections whose Kirby-Thompson…
Let $G$ be a finite group, and let $X$ be a smooth, orientable, connected, closed 4-dimensional $G$-manifold. Let $\mathcal{S}$ be a smooth, embedded, $G$-invariant surface in $X$. We introduce the concept of a $G$-equivariant trisection of…
The adjunction inequality is a key tool for bounding the genus of smoothly embedded surfaces in 4-manifolds. Using gauge-theoretic invariants, many versions of this inequality have been established for both closed surfaces and surfaces with…
Let $T$ be a graph in a compact, orientable 3--manifold $M$ and let $\Gamma$ be a subgraph. $T$ can be placed in bridge position with respect to a Heegaard surface $H$. We show that if $H$ is what we call $(T,\Gamma)$-c-weakly reducible in…