Related papers: Self-Referential Discs and the Light Bulb Lemma

In this article, we study a free boundary isometric embedding problem for abstract Riemannian two-manifolds with the topology of the disc. Under the assumption of positive Gauss curvature and geodesic curvature of the boundary being equal…

In this note, we give explicit examples of compact complex 3-folds which admit automorphisms that are isotopic to the identity through C $\infty$-diffeomorphisms but not through biholomorphisms. These automorphisms play an important role in…

We show that if two links in the real projective 3-space $\mathbb{RP}^{3}$ have isotopic preimages in the 3-sphere $S^{3}$ by the double covering map, then they are themselves isotopic in $\mathbb{RP}^{3}$.

In this note we give a complete obstruction for two homotopic embeddings of a 2-sphere into a 5-manifold to be isotopic. The results are new even though the methods are classical, the main tool being the elimination of double points via a…

We define pointwise partial differential relations for holomorphic discs. Given a relative homotopy class, a relation, and a generic almost complex structure we provide the moduli space of discs which have an injective point 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…

We prove analogs of Thom's transversality theorem and Whitney's theorem on immersions for pseudo-holomorphic discs. We also prove that pseudo-holomorphic discs form a manifold.

We show --- with the means of a real-analytic example in $\mathbb{C}^3$ --- that Gromov's theorem on the presence of attached holomorphic discs for compact Lagrangian manifolds is not true in the isotropic (subcritical) case, even in the…

We show that $\mathbb{C}^2$ contains pairs of properly embedded, smooth complex curves that are isotopic through homeomorphisms but not diffeomorphisms of $\mathbb{C}^2$. The construction is based on realizing corks as branched covers of…

We study pseudoholomorphic discs with boundaries attached to a real hypersurface in an almost complex manifold of dimension 2. We prove that if the hypersurface contains no discs, then they fill a one sided neighborhood of the hypersurface.

We describe a procedure to construct infinite sets of pairwise smoothly inequivalent 2-spheres in simply connected 4-manifolds, which are topologically isotopic and whose complement has a prescribed fundamental group that satisfies some…

A locally flatly embedded $2$-sphere in a compact $4$-manifold $X$ is called a spine if the inclusion map is a homotopy equivalence. A spine is called simple if the complement of the $2$-sphere has abelian fundamental group. We prove that…

A diffeomorphism $f$ of a compact manifold $X$ is pseudo-isotopic to the identity if there is a diffeomorphism $F$ of $X\times I$ which restricts to $f$ on $X\times 1$, and which restricts to the identity on $X\times 0$ and $\partial…

We have been interested in understanding the class of 7-dimensional closed and simply-connected manifolds in geometric and constructive ways. We have constructed explicit fold maps, which are higher dimensional versions of Morse functions,…

We use the reflection group trick to glue manifolds with corners that are Borel-Serre compactifications of locally symmetric spaces of noncompact type and obtain aspherical manifolds. We call these \emph{piecewise locally symmetric}…

Let $\Gamma$ be either the infinite cyclic group $\mathbb{Z}$ or the Baumslag-Solitar group $\mathbb{Z} \ltimes \mathbb{Z}[\frac{1}{2}]$. Let $K$ be a slice knot admitting a slice disc $D$ in the 4-ball whose exterior has fundamental group…

Let M be a smooth manifold which is homeomorphic to the n-fold product of S^k, where k is odd. There is an induced homomorphism from the group of diffeomorphisms of M to the automorphism group of H k (M ; Z). We prove that the image of this…

The main theorem shows that if M is an irreducible compact connected orientable 3-manifold with non-empty boundary, then the classifying space BDiff(M rel dM) of the space of diffeomorphisms of M which restrict to the identity map on…

Let f be an orientation preserving homeomorphism of the disc D2 which possesses a periodic point of period 3. Then either f is isotopic, relative the periodic orbit, to a homeomorphism g which is conjugate to a rotation by 2 pi /3 or 4 pi…

We answer a question of Livingston from 1982 by producing Seifert surfaces of the same genus for a knot in $S^3$ that do not become isotopic when their interiors are pushed into $B^4$. In particular, we identify examples where the surfaces…