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

A self-focal point of a Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ is a point $p$ so that every geodesic starting from $p$ returns to $p$ at some positive time. It is called a pole if all geodesics through $p$ are closed, and a non-polar self-focal point…

We construct the first examples of non-smoothable self-homeomorphisms of smooth $4$-manifolds with boundary that fix the boundary and act trivially on homology. As a corollary, we construct self-diffeomorphisms of $4$-manifolds with…

We study complex hyperbolic disc bundles over closed orientable surfaces that arise from discrete and faithful representations H_n->PU(2,1), where H_n is the fundamental group of the orbifold S^2(2,...,2) and thus contains a surface group…

The edge of torn elastic sheets and growing leaves often form a hierarchical buckling pattern. Within non-Euclidean plate theory this complex morphology can be understood as low bending energy isometric immersions of hyperbolic Riemannian…

We show that any number of disjointly embedded 2-spheres in 4-space can be pulled apart by a link homotopy, ie, by a motion in which the 2-spheres stay disjoint but are allowed to self-intersect.

We prove the following result: Let $(X,g_0)$ be a complete, connected 4-manifold with uniformly positive isotropic curvature and with bounded geometry. Then there is a finite collection $\mathcal{F}$ of manifolds of the form $\mathbb{S}^3…

The Solomon-Tits theorem says that the poset of proper non-trivial subspaces of a finite-dimensional vector space has realisation equivalent to a wedge of spheres. In this paper we prove a variant of this result for collections of geodesic…

We construct pairs of compact Riemannian orbifolds which are isospectral for the Laplace operator on functions such that the maximal isotropy order of singular points in one of the orbifolds is higher than in the other. In one type of…

We consider embeddings of 3-manifolds in $S^4$ such that each of the two complementary regions has an abelian fundamental group. In particular, we show that an homology handle $M$ has such an embedding if and only if $\pi_1(M)'$ is perfect,…

We show that any two same-genus, oriented, boundary parallel surfaces bounded by a non-split, alternating link into the 4-ball are smoothly isotopic fixing boundary. In other words, any same-genus Seifert surfaces for a non-split,…

Let $\sigma$ be the scattering relation on a compact Riemannian manifold $M$ with non-necessarily convex boundary, that maps initial points of geodesic rays on the boundary and initial directions to the outgoing point on the boundary and…

We construct infinite families of topologically isotopic but smoothly distinct knotted spheres in many simply connected 4-manifolds that become smoothly isotopic after stabilizing by connected summing with $S^2 \times S^2$, and as a…

Given a simply connected, closed four manifold, we associate to it a simply connected, closed, spin five manifold. This leads to several consequences : the stable and unstable homotopy groups of such a four manifold is determined by its…

We show that the standard method for constructing closed hyperbolic manifolds of arbitrary dimension possessing reflective symmetries typically produces reflections whose fixed point sets are nonseparating.

We use lens-shaped models and the second obstruction to pseudoisotopy to construct a nontrivial diffeomorphism of $M\times I$ where $M$ is the connected sum of $S^1\times S^2$ with a another nonsimply connected 3-manifold $M'$. Then we take…

We construct a locally hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ such that $\pi_ 1(M)$ has no divisible subgroups. We then show that $M$ is not homotopy equivalent to any complete hyperbolic manifold.

We prove that a $4$-dimensional simply connected, compact critical metric of the volume functional with harmonic anti-self dual Weyl tensor and boundary isometric to a standard sphere $\mathbb{S}^{3}$ is isometric to a geodesic ball in a…

In this paper, we completely classify all compact 4-manifolds with positive isotropic curvature. We show that they are diffeomorphic to $\mathbb{S}^4,$ or $\mathbb{R}\mathbb{P}^4$ or quotients of $\mathbb{S}^3\times \mathbb{R}$ by a…

We investigate certain $4$-dimensional analogues of the classical $3$-dimensional Dehn's lemma, giving examples where such analogues do or do not hold, in the smooth and topological categories. In particular, we show that an essential…

We characterise boundary shaped disc like neighbourhoods of certain isotropic submanifolds in terms of aperiodicity of Reeb flows. We prove uniqueness of homotopy and diffeomorphism type of such contact manifolds assuming non-existence of…