Related papers: Knotted 3-balls in S^4

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,…

We define the notion of a braided link cobordism in $S^3 \times [0,1]$, which generalizes Viro's closed surface braids in $\mathbb{R}^4$. We prove that any properly embedded oriented surface $W \subset S^3 \times [0,1]$ is isotopic to a…

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…

In the present study we consider knotted spheres in Euclidean $4$-space $ \mathbb{E}^{4}$. Firstly, we give some basic curvature properties of knotted spheres in $ \mathbb{E}^{4}$. Further, we obtained some results related with the…

This paper addresses several isotopy problems on $4$-manifolds. First, we classify the isotopy classes of embeddings of $\Sigma$ in $\Sigma\times S^2$ that are geometrically dual to $\{\mbox{pt}\}\times S^2$, where $\Sigma$ is a closed…

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…

An approach by J.Wu describes homotopy groups $\pi_{n}(S^2)$ of the standard 2-sphere as isotopy classes of spherical $n+1$--strand Brunnian braids is investigated in the case $n=3$ for applications.

We work in the smooth category. If there are knotted embeddings S^n\to R^m, which often happens for 2m<3n+4, then no concrete complete description of embeddings of n-manifolds into R^m up to isotopy was known, except for disjoint unions of…

We show, up to h-cobordism, that the existence and uniqueness of connected sum decompositions of oriented 4-dimensional manifolds is an invariant of homotopy equivalence, assuming that the fundamental group of each summand is "good" in the…

We consider a class of topological objects in the 3-sphere $S^3$ which will be called {\it $n$-punctured ball tangles}. Using the Kauffman bracket at $A=e^{\pi i/4}$, an invariant for a special type of $n$-punctured ball tangles is defined.…

Take n>k>1 such that n-k is odd. In this paper we consider mapping a from (n-k+1)-dimensional closed ball into the space of (n \times k)--matrices such that its restriction to a sphere goes into the Stiefel manifold V_k(R^n). We construct a…

The nonorientable four-ball genus of a knot $K$ in $S^3$ is the minimal first Betti number of nonorientable surfaces in $B^4$ bounded by $K$. By amalgamating ideas from involutive knot Floer homology and unoriented knot Floer homology, we…

In this paper, we prove that any closed orientable 3-manifold $M$ other than $\#^k S^1\times S^2$ and $S^3$ satisfies the following properties: (1) For any compact orientable 4-manifold $N$ bounded by $M$, the inclusion does not induce an…

In this paper we study isotopy classes of closed connected orientable surfaces in the standard $3$-sphere. Such a surface splits the $3$-sphere into two compact connected submanifolds, and by using their Heegaard splittings, we obtain a…

In this paper we use character variety methods to study homomorphisms between the fundamental groups of 3-manifolds, in particular those induced by non-zero degree maps. A {\it knot manifold} is a compact, connected, irreducible, orientable…

The rational homology balls $B_n$ appeared in Fintushel and Stern's rational blow-down construction [FS] and were subsequently used (e.g. Fintushel-Stern[FS4], Park[Pa2]) to construct exotic smooth manifolds with small Euler numbers. We…

We give an infinite family of embeddings of $\mathbb{R} P^2$ to $S^4$ such that they are mutually topologically isotopic however are not smoothly isotopic to each other. Moreover, they are topologically isotopic to the standard $P^2$-knot.…

By the Fox's re-embedding theorem, any compact submanifold of the 3-sphere can be re-embedded in the 3-sphere so that it is unknotted. It is unknown whether the Fox's re-embedding can be replaced with twistings. In this paper, we will show…

Kronheimer-Mrowka recently proved that the Dehn twist along a 3-sphere in the neck of $K3\#K3$ is not smoothly isotopic to the identity. This provides a new example of self-diffeomorphisms on 4-manifolds that are isotopic to the identity in…

In this thesis we study the Seiberg-Witten theory of an oriented homology 3-sphere. The goal is to extract topological invariants - the Seiberg-Witten invariants - by counting the solutions to the Seiberg-Witten equations on the manifold.…