Related papers: Corks and exotic ribbons in $B^{4}$

We describe a construction procedure of infinite sets of $2$-links in closed simply connected 4-manifolds that are topologically isotopic, smoothly inequivalent and componentwise topologically unknotted. These 2-links are the first examples…

A holomorphic Engel structure determines a flag of distributions $\mathcal{W}\subset \mathcal{D}\subset \mathcal{E}$. We construct examples of Engel structures on $\mathbf{C}^4$ such that each of these distributions is hyperbolic in the…

Given a closed four-manifold $X$ with an indefinite intersection form, we consider smoothly embedded surfaces in $X \setminus $int$(B^4)$, with boundary a knot $K \subset S^3$. We give several methods to bound the genus of such surfaces in…

In this paper we show that there are two symplectic surfaces in the 4-ball which bound the same transverse knot, have the same topology (as abstract surfaces), and are distinguished by the fundamental groups of their complements.

We construct an example of a cork that remains exotic after taking a connected sum with $S^2 \times S^2$. Combined with a work of Akbulut-Ruberman, this implies the existence of an exotic pair of contractible 4-manifolds which remains…

In this article, we construct the first example of a simply connected minimal symplectic 4-manifold homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to 3CP^2#7CP^2b. We also construct the first exotic symplectic structure on CP^2#5CP^2b.

For a 4-manifold $M$ and a knot $k\colon\mathbb{S}^1\hookrightarrow\partial M$ with dual sphere $G\colon\mathbb{S}^2\hookrightarrow\partial M$, we compute the set $\mathbb{D}(M;k)$ of smooth isotopy classes of neat embeddings…

Motivated by a question of Rubel, we consider the problem of characterizing which noncompact hypersurfaces in $\RR^n$ can be regular level sets of a harmonic function modulo a $C^\infty$ diffeomorphism, as well as certain generalizations to…

We show that any simply connected topological closed $4$-manifold punctured along any compact, totally disconnected tame subset $\Lambda$ admits a continuum of smoothings which are not diffeomorphic to any leaf of a $C^{1,0}$ codimension…

I prove that any two smooth collections of spanning 3-discs for the trivial 2-link in $S^4$ become smoothly isotopic rel. boundary after pushing them into $D^5$.

We study $5$-dimensional $h$-cobordisms of Morgan-Szab\'o complexity $2$. We compute the monopole Floer homology and the action of the twisting involution of the protocork boundary associated with such $h$-cobordisms, obtaining an…

We construct pairs of non-isometric hyperbolic 3-orbifolds with the same topological type and volume. Topologically these orbifolds are mapping tori of pseudo-Anosov maps of the surface of genus 2, with singular locus a fibred (hyperbolic)…

We give a flexible construction for knots in the 3-sphere that bound surfaces of unexpectedly low genus in punctured open books on 3-manifolds. We use this construction to give the first examples of knots whose genus differs in different…

We prove that a Casson tower of height 4 contains a flat embedded disc bounded by the attaching circle, and we prove disc embedding results for height 2 and 3 Casson towers which are embedded into a 4-manifold, with some additional…

We study smooth, proper embeddings of noncompact surfaces in 4-manifolds, focusing on exotic planes and annuli, i.e., embeddings pairwise homeomorphic to the standard embeddings of R^2 and R^2-int D^2 in R^4. We encounter two uncountable…

This paper studies the rational homotopy groups of the group $\mathrm{Diff}(S^4)$ of self-diffeomorphisms of $S^4$ with the $C^\infty$-topology. We present a method to prove that there are many `exotic' non-trivial elements in…

In this article, we construct infinitley many simply connected, nonsymplectic and pairwise nondiffeomorphic 4-manifolds starting from E(n) and applying the sequence of knot surgery, ordinary blowups and rational blowdown. We also compute…

In this paper we exhibit infinite families of embedded tori in 4-manifolds that are topologically isotopic but smoothly distinct. The interesting thing about these tori is that they are topologically trivial in the sense that each bounds a…

In this paper we consider closed orientable surfaces $S$ of positive genus and $C^r$-diffeomorphisms $f:S\rightarrow S$ isotopic to the identity ($r\geq 1)$. The main objective is to study periodic open topological disks which are…

We study locally flat disks in $(\mathbb{C} P^2)^\circ:=(\mathbb{C} P^2)\setminus \mathring{B^4}$ with boundary a fixed knot $K$ and whose complement has fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}$. We show that up to topological isotopy rel. boundary,…