Related papers: Small exotic 4-manifolds from lines and quadrics i…

We show that every negative definite configuration of symplectic surfaces in a symplectic 4--manifold has a strongly symplectically convex neighborhood. We use this to show that, if a negative definite configuration satisfies an additional…

This paper studies properly embedded surfaces in the 4-ball that are exotically knotted (i.e., topologically but not smoothly isotopic), and leverages this local phenomenon to study surfaces in larger 4-manifolds. The main results provide a…

For a generic anti-canonical hypersurface in each smooth toric Fano 4-fold with rank 2 Picard group, we prove there exist three isolated rational curves in it. Moreover, for all these 4-folds except one, the contractions of generic…

We construct a number of topologically trivial but smoothly non-trivial families of embeddings of 3-manifolds in 4-manifolds. These include embeddings of homology spheres in $S^4$ that are not isotopic but have diffeomorphic complements,…

One approach to produce a pair of homeomorphic-but-not-diffeomophic closed 4-manifolds is to find a knot which is smoothly slice in one but not the other. This approach has never been run successfully. We give the first examples of a pair…

Fintushel and Stern defined the rational blow-down construction [FS] for smooth 4-manifolds, where a linear plumbing configuration of spheres $C_n$ is replaced with a rational homology ball $B_n$, $n \geq 2$. Subsequently, Symington [Sy]…

We show that the smooth $4$-manifold $M$ obtained by attaching a $2$-handle to $B^4$ along a certain knot $K\subset \partial B^4$ admits infinitely many absolutely exotic copies $M_n$, $n=0,1,2..$, such that each copy $M_n$ is obtained by…

We study embedded spheres in 4-manifolds (2-knots) via doubly pointed trisection diagrams, showing that such descriptions are unique up to stabilization and handleslides, and we describe how to obtain trisection diagrams for certain…

In this paper we construct a minimal symplectic 4-manifold and prove it is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to CP^2 # 3(-CP^2)

We present the various constructions of new symplectic $4$-manifolds with non-negative signatures using the complex surfaces on the BMY line $c_1^2 = 9\chi_h$, the Cartwright-Steger surfaces, the quotients of Hirzebruch's certain…

We prove that there exist infinitely many contractible compact smooth $4$-manifolds $C$ that admit absolutely exotic diffeomorphisms of infinite order in $\pi_0(\mathrm{Diff}(C))$. By ``absolutely", we mean that isotopies are not required…

We survey the implications of our joint work with E. Bru\`e and A. Pigati on the structure of blow-downs for a smooth, complete, Riemannian $4$-manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature and Euclidean volume growth. Very imprecisely, any…

We generalize the RBG construction of Manolescu and Piccirillo to produce pairs of knots with the same $n$-surgery, and investigate the possibility of constructing exotic definite four-manifolds using $n$-surgery homeomorphisms.

Motivated by a recent result of Y. Lee and the second author[7], we construct a simply connected minimal complex surface of general type with p_g=0 and K^2=3 using a rational blow-down surgery and Q-Gorenstein smoothing theory. In a similar…

Let $X$ be a connected compact 3-manifold with non-empty boundary. Consider the boundary $M$ of $X\times D^2$. $M$ is a 4-dimensional closed manifold and has the same fundamental group as $X$. Various examples of $X$ are known for which a…

We discuss corks, and introduce new objects which we call plugs. Though plugs are fundamentally different objects, they also detect exotic smooth structures in 4-manifolds like corks. We discuss relation between corks, plugs and rational…

We find an obstruction to the existence of non-singular solutions to the normalized Ricci flow on four-manifolds with $b^+=1$. By using this obstruction, we study the relationship between the existence or non-existence of non-singular…

We compare the star surgery operations introduced in [KS] to the generalized rational blow-down. We show that star surgery shares the properties that make rational blow-down useful for constructions of small exotic symplectic 4-manifolds.…

We study exotic smoothings of open 4-manifolds using the minimal genus function and its analog for end homology. While traditional techniques in open 4-manifold smoothing theory give no control of minimal genera, we make progress by using…

We construct a minimal complex surface of general type with $p_g=0$, $K^2 =4$, and $\pi_1=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$ using a rational blow-down surgery and a $\mathbb{Q}$-Gorenstein smoothing theory. In a similar fashion, we also construct a…