Related papers: Topological 4-manifolds with 4-dimensional fundame…

A smooth, compact 4-manifold with a Riemannian metric and b^(2+) > 0 has a non-trivial, closed, self-dual 2-form. If the metric is generic, then the zero set of this form is a disjoint union of circles. On the complement of this zero set,…

We prove that homological stability fails for the moduli space of any simply-connected closed smooth 4-manifold in any degree of homology, unlike what happens in all dimensions $\neq 4$. We detect also the homological discrepancy between…

Formality is a topological property, defined in terms of Sullivan's model for a space. In the simply-connected setting, a space is formal if its rational homotopy type is determined by the rational cohomology ring. In the general setting,…

We construct stable minimal hypersurfaces with simple topology in certain compact $4$-manifolds $X$ with boundary, where $X$ embeds into a smooth manifold homeomorphic to $S^4$. For example, if $X$ is equipped with a Riemannian metric $g$…

A real Bott manifold is the total space of iterated RP^1 bundles starting with a point, where each RP^1 bundle is projectivization of a Whitney sum of two real line bundles. We prove that two real Bott manifolds are diffeomorphic if their…

Let X and Y be oriented topological manifolds of dimension n + 2, and let K and J be connected, locally-flat, oriented, n-dimensional submanifolds of X and Y. We show that up to orientation preserving homeomorphism there is a well-defined…

In this short note we prove the Borel conjecture for a family of aspherical manifolds that includes higher graph manifolds.

We consider the role of the Kervaire--Milnor invariant in the classification of closed, connected, spin 4-manifolds, typically denoted by $M$, up to stabilisation by connected sums with copies of $S^2 \times S^2$. This stable classification…

We prove some contact analogs of smooth embedding theorems for closed $\pi$-manifolds. We show that a closed, $k$-connected, $\pi$-manifold of dimension (2n + 1) that bounds a $\pi$-manifold, contact embeds in the $(4n-2k+3)$-dimensional…

This paper continues the study of decompositions of a smooth 4-manifold into two handlebodies with handles of index $\leq2$. Part I gave existence results in terms of spines and chain complexes over the fundamental group of the ambient…

We classify all closed, aspherical Riemannian manifolds M whose universal cover has indiscrete isometry group. One sample application is the theorem that any such M with word-hyperbolic fundamental group must be isometric to a negatively…

We show that for an oriented 4-dimensional Poincar\'e complex with finite fundamental group, whose 2-Sylow subgroup is abelian with at most 2 generators, the homotopy type is determined by its quadratic 2-type.

We use Gay and Kirby's description of 4-manifolds in terms of trisections and trisection diagrams to define a new 4-manifold invariant. The algebraic data are an indecomposable finite semisimple bimodule category over a pair of spherical…

In this note we classify the diffeomorphism classes rel. boundary of smooth h-cobordisms between two fixed 1-connected 4-manifolds in terms of isometries between the intersection forms.

We show that two properly embedded compact surfaces in an orientable 4-manifold are cobordant if and only if they are $\mathbb{Z}/2$-homologous and either the 4-manifold has boundary or the surfaces have the same normal Euler number. If the…

Simply-connected manifolds of positive sectional curvature $M$ are speculated to have a rigid topological structure. In particular, they are conjectured to be rationally elliptic, i.e., all but finitely many homotopy groups are conjectured…

The topological fundamental group $\pi_{1}^{top}$ is a topological invariant that assigns to each space a quasi-topological group and is discrete on spaces which are well behaved locally. For a totally path-disconnected, Hausdorff, unbased…

The goal of this book is to characterize algebraically the closed 4-manifolds that fibre nontrivially or admit geometries in the sense of Thurston, or which are obtained by surgery on 2-knots, and to provide a reference for the topology of…

If a (possibly finite) compact Lie group acts effectively, locally linearly, and homologically trivially on a closed, simply-connected four-manifold with second Betti number at least three, then it must be isomorphic to a subgroup of S^1 x…

A topological commutative ring is said to be rigid when for every set $X$, the topological dual of the $X$-fold topological product of the ring is isomorphic to the free module over $X$. Examples are fields with a ring topology, discrete…