Related papers: Uniqueness of 4-manifolds described as sequences o…

In the author's earlier work there appeared a new way to specify any smooth closed 4-manifold by a surface diagram, which consists of an orientable surface decorated with simple closed curves. These curves are cyclically indexed, and each…

We show that every smooth, orientable, closed, connected 4-manifold can be represented by a loop in the pants complex. We use this representation, together with the fact that the pants complex is simply connected, to provide an elementary…

A trisection of a smooth, closed, oriented 4-manifold is a decomposition into three 4-dimensional 1-handlebodies meeting pairwise in 3-dimensional 1-handlebodies, with triple intersection a closed surface. The fundamental groups of the…

In the paper \cite{wall_1}, C.T.C. Wall proved that two smooth closed simply connected 4-manifolds which are homeomorphic are in fact stably diffeomorphic. We prove a similar result which states that two smooth closed 4-manifolds satisfying…

We offer a new proof that two closed oriented 4-manifolds are cobordant if their signatures agree, in the spirit of Lickorish's proof that all closed oriented 3-manifolds bound 4-manifolds. Where Lickorish uses Heegaard splittings we use…

A Morse 2-function is a generic smooth map from a manifold M of arbitrary finite dimension to a surface B. Its critical set maps to an immersed collection of cusped arcs in B. The aim of this paper is to explain exactly when it is possible…

We show that any smooth, closed, oriented, connected 4--manifold can be trisected into three copies of $\natural^k (S^1 \times B^3)$, intersecting pairwise in 3--dimensional handlebodies, with triple intersection a closed 2--dimensional…

We note that infinitely many irreducible, closed, simply connected 4-manifolds, with prescribed signature and spin type, admit perfect Morse functions, i.e. they can be given handle decompositions without 1- and 3-handles. In particular,…

Closed (and simply-connected) manifolds whose dimensions are larger than 4 are central geometric objects in classical algebraic topology and differential topology. They have been classified via algebraic and abstract objects. On the other…

We introduce multisections of smooth, closed 4-manifolds, which generalize trisections to decompositions with more than three pieces. This decomposition describes an arbitrary smooth, closed 4-manifold as a sequence of cut systems on a…

This paper is concerned with the problem of stable diffeomorphism classification of 4-manifolds obtained using the surgery on loops. The main theorem states that under the assumption that the normal 1-type of two 4-manifolds in question is…

A Morse 2-function is a generic smooth map from a smooth manifold to a surface. In the absence of definite folds (in which case we say that the Morse 2-function is indefinite), these are natural generalizations of broken (Lefschetz)…

Closed (and simply-connected) manifolds whose dimensions are greater than 4 are classified via sophisticated algebraic and abstract theory such as surgery theory and homotopy theory. It is difficult to handle 3 or 4-dimensional closed…

We prove the existence of a finite set of moves sufficient to relate any two representations of the same 3-manifold as a 4-fold simple branched covering of S^3. We also prove a stabilization result: after adding a fifth trivial sheet two…

We study the set of all closed oriented smooth 4-manifolds experimentally, according to a suitable complexity defined using Turaev's shadows. This complexity roughly measures how complicated the 2-skeleton of the 4-manifold is. We…

A combinatorial presentation of closed orientable 3-manifolds as bi-tricolored links is given together with two versions of a calculus via moves to manipulate bi-tricolored links without changing the represented manifold. That is, we…

This paper is the second part of our work on 4-dimensional 2-handlebodies. In the first part (arXiv:math.GT/0407032) it is shown that up to certain set of local moves, connected simple coverings of B^4 branched over ribbon surfaces,…

Round handles are affiliated with smooth 4-manifolds in two major ways: 5-dimensional round handles appear extensively as the building blocks in cobordisms between 4-manifolds, whereas 4-dimensional round handles are the building blocks of…

We show that there exists an algorithm that takes as input two closed, simply connected, topological 4-manifolds and decides whether or not these 4-manifolds are homeomorphic. In particular, we explain in detail how closed, simply…

We prove that any closed simply-connected smooth 4-manifold is 16-fold branched covered by a product of an orientable surface with the 2-torus, where the construction is natural with respect to spin structures. In particular this solves…