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Compact pseudo-Riemannian manifolds that have parallel Weyl tensor without being conformally flat or locally symmetric are known to exist in infinitely many dimensions greater than 4. We prove some general topological properties of such…
In this paper we show that a simply connected 8-dimensional manifold M of positive sectional curvature and symmetry rank $\geq 2$ resembles a rank one symmetric space in several ways. For example, the Euler characteristic of M is equal to…
A compact oriented 4-manifold is defined to be of ``superconformal simple type'' if certain polynomials in the basic classes (constructed using the Seiberg-Witten invariants) vanish identically. We show that all known 4-manifolds of…
A 1930s conjecture of Hopf states that an even-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold with positive sectional curvature has positive Euler characteristic. We prove this conjecture under the additional assumption that the isometry group has…
If one could assume that local coordinates in a Riemannian manifold were orthogonal, then local expressions for differential operators, and curvature computations, would be simplified. It is always possible on 2-manifolds, using geometric…
This note revisits the ideas in an earlier (2007) paper on orbifolds and branched manifolds, showing how the constructions can be simplified by using a version of the Kuranishi atlases recently developed by McDuff--Wehrheim. We first show…
In this article, we construct infinitely many (small Seifert fibred, hyperbolic and toroidal) rational homology $3$-spheres that admit co-orientable taut foliations, but none with vanishing Euler class. In the context of the $L$-space…
We classify flat strict nearly K\"ahler manifolds with (necessarily) indefinite metric. Any such manifold is locally the product of a flat pseudo-K\"ahler factor of maximal dimension and a strict flat nearly K\"ahler manifold of split…
We prove that a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension $n\ge 8$ with harmonic Weyl curvature and $\frac{3(n-1)(n+2)}{4(3n-1)}$-nonnegative curvature operator of the second kind is either globally conformally equivalent to a space of…
We present an explicit construction of closed oriented aspherical smooth 4-manifolds with $\chi = \sigma = n$ for every positive integer $n$. This proves a conjecture of Edmonds by providing a closed oriented aspherical 4-manifold with…
We construct examples of four dimensional manifolds with Spin$^c$-structures, whose moduli spaces of solutions to the Seiberg-Witten equations, represent a non-trivial bordism class of positive dimension, i.e. the Spin$^c$-structures are…
A self-transverse immersion of a smooth manifold M^{k+2} in R^{2k+2} has a double point self-intersection set which is the image of an immersion of a smooth surface, the double point self-intersection surface. We prove that this surface may…
A connected combinatorial 2-manifold is called degree-regular if each of its vertices have the same degree. A connected combinatorial 2-manifold is called weakly regular if it has a vertex-transitive automorphism group. Clearly, a weakly…
Manifolds admitting positive sectional curvature are conjectured to have rigid homotopical structure and, in particular, comparatively small Euler charateristics. In this article, we obtain upper bounds for the Euler characteristic of a…
A space $X$ is $W$-trivial if for every real vector bundle $\alpha$ over $X$ the total Stiefel-Whitney class $w(\alpha)$ is 1. It follows from a result of Milnor that if $X$ is an orientable closed smooth manifold of dimension $1,2,4$ or…
HyperK\"ahler spaces, including manifolds, orbifolds and conical singularities play an important role in superstring/$M$-theory and gauge theories as well as in differential and algebraic geometry. In this paper we provide hundreds of new…
Hopf conjectured that even-dimensional closed Riemannian manifolds with positive sectional curvature have positive Euler characteristic. The conclusion of the conjecture is known to fail if the positive sectional curvature assumption is…
We prove that a closed oriented Einstein four-manifold is either anti-self-dual or (after passing to a double Riemann cover if necessary) K\"ahler-Einstein, provided that $\lambda_2 \geq -\frac{S}{12}$, where $\lambda_2$ is the middle…
It is well known that the Euler characteristic of an odd dimensional compact manifold is zero. An Euler complex is a combinatorial analogue of a compact manifold. We present here an elementary proof of the corresponding result for Euler…
We compute explicit transgression forms for the Euler and Pontrjagin classes of a Riemannian manifold $M$ of dimension 4 under a conformal change of the metric, or a change to a Riemannian connection with torsion. These formulae describe…