Related papers: 3-manifolds that bound no definite 4-manifold
We construct an invariant of closed ${\rm spin}^c$ 4-manifolds using families of Seiberg-Witten equations. This invariant is formulated as a cohomology class on a certain abstract simplicial complex consisting of embedded surfaces of a…
We study which lens spaces can bound smooth 4-manifolds with second Betti number one under various topological conditions. Specifically, we show that there are infinite families of lens spaces that bound compact, simply-connected, smooth…
In this article we show that every closed oriented smooth 4-manifold can be decomposed into two codimension zero submanifolds (one with reversed orientation) so that both pieces are exact Kahler manifolds with strictly pseudoconvex…
In this note, we show that there exist cusped hyperbolic $3$-manifolds that embed geodesically, but cannot bound geometrically. Thus, being a geometric boundary is a non-trivial property for such manifolds. Our result complements the work…
In a recent article, the authors constructed a six-parameter family of highly connected 7-manifolds which admit an SO(3)-invariant metric of non-negative sectional curvature. Each member of this family is the total space of a Seifert…
We show that three natural decision problems about links and 3-manifolds are computationally hard, assuming some conjectures in complexity theory. The first problem is determining whether a link in the 3-sphere bounds a Seifert surface with…
We introduce a new generalization of Gompf nuclei and give applications. We construct infinitely many exotic smooth structures for a large class of compact 4-manifolds with boundary, regarding topological invariants. We prove that a large…
A regular fiber of the Seifert fibering of the Poincar\'e homology sphere admits a Dehn surgery to $L(2,1)\#L(3,2)\#L(5,4)$. We prove that this is the only knot in the Poincar\'e homology sphere with a surgery to a connected sum of more…
We consider constraints on the topology of closed 3-manifolds that can arise as hypersurfaces of contact type in standard symplectic $R^4$. Using an obstruction derived from Heegaard Floer homology we prove that no Brieskorn homology sphere…
Given a knot in a closed connected orientable 3-manifold we prove that if the exterior of the knot admits an aperiodic contact form that is Euclidean near the boundary, then the 3-manifold is diffeomorphic to the 3-sphere and the knot is…
We construct compact hyperbolic 3-manifolds with totally geodesic boundary, such that the closed 3-pseudomanifolds obtained by coning off the boundary components are negatively curved and contain locally convex subspaces whose fundamental…
We show that a complete contractible 3-manifold with positive scalar curvature and bounded geometry must be $\mathbb R^3$. We also show that an open handlebody of genus larger than 1 does not admit complete metrics with positive scalar…
By a construction of Berstein and Edmonds every proper branched cover f between manifolds is a factor of a branched covering orbit map from a locally connected and locally compact Hausdorff space called the monodromy space of f to the…
We study complete $3$-manifolds with nonnegative scalar curvature under additional regularity assumptions. We prove that a contractible such manifold is diffeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^3$, and that an open handlebody admitting such a metric…
We develop the theory of the diagrammatics of surface cross sections to prove that there are an infinite number of homology 3-spheres smoothly embeddable in a homology 4-sphere but not in a homotopy 4-sphere. Our primary obstruction comes…
Let K be a fibered knot in the 3-sphere. We show that if the monodromy of K is sufficiently complicated, then Dehn surgery on K cannot yield a lens space. Work of Yi Ni shows that if K has a lens space surgery then it is fibered. Combining…
In this paper, we first give a new simple proof to the elimination theorem of definite fold by homotopy for generic smooth maps of manifolds of dimension strictly greater than $2$ into the $2$--sphere or into the real projective plane. Our…
We prove that a four-dimensional Lorentzian manifold that is curvature homogeneous of order 3, or $\CH_3$ for short, is necessarily locally homogeneous. We also exhibit and classify four-dimensional Lorentzian, $\CH_2$ manifolds that are…
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…
We compute the Heegaard Floer homology of an oriented 3-manifold obtained by a negative rational surgery along an arbitrary algebraic knot.