Related papers: Trace Embeddings from Zero Surgery Homeomorphisms

It is well-known by the work of Hsiang and Kleiner that every closed oriented positively curved 4-dimensional manifold with an effective isometric S^1-action is homeomorphic to S^4 or CP^2. As stated, it is a topological classification. The…

We show that the Khovanov-Rozansky $\mathfrak{gl}_2$ skein lasagna module distinguishes the exotic pair of knot traces $X_{-1}(-5_2)$ and $X_{-1}(P(3,-3,-8))$, an example first discovered by Akbulut. This gives the first analysis-free proof…

The $m$-trace of a knot is the $4$-manifold obtained from $\mathbf{B}^4$ by attaching a $2$-handle along the knot with $m$-framing. In 2015, Abe, Jong, Luecke and Osoinach introduced a technique to construct infinitely many knots with the…

We classify nonnegatively curved simply connected 4-manifolds with circle symmetry up to equivariant diffeomorphisms. The main problem is rule out knotted curves in the singular set of the orbit space. As an extension of this work we…

We construct an invariant of open four-manifolds using the Heegaard Floer theory of Ozsvath and Szabo. We show that there is a manifold X homeomorphic to R^4 for which the invariant is non-trivial, showing that X is an exotic R^4.

We prove that there exist infinitely many contractible compact smooth $4$-manifolds $C$ that admit absolutely exotic diffeomorphisms of infinite order in $\pi_0(\mathrm{Diff}(C))$. By ``absolutely", we mean that isotopies are not required…

On subsets E of the Mandelbrot set M, homeomorphisms are constructed by quasi-conformal surgery. When the dynamics of quadratic polynomials is changed piecewise by a combinatorial construction, a general theorem yields the corresponding…

We prove a surgery formula for the ordinary Seiberg-Witten invariants of smooth $4$-manifolds with $b_1 =1$. Our formula expresses the Seiberg-Witten invariants of the manifold after the surgery, in terms of the original Seiberg-Witten…

Under certain homological hypotheses on a compact 4-manifold, we prove exactness of the topological surgery sequence at the stably smoothable normal invariants. The main examples are the class of finite connected sums of 4-manifolds with…

We construct smooth manifolds with order two $\pi_1$ and even intersection forms which are irreducible, meaning they do not decompose into non-trivial connected sums. Their intersection forms being even implies that their universal covers…

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,…

It is known that S^4 is a union of two fishtails, and S^2 x S^2 is a union of two cusps (glued along their boundaries). Here we prove that, for any choice of knots K,L in S^3, performing knot surgery operations to S^4 and S^2 x S^2, along…

From a handlebody-theoretic perspective, the simplest compact, contractible 4-manifolds, other than the 4-ball, are Mazur manifolds. We produce the first pairs of Mazur manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic. Our…

We give two infinite families of examples of closed, orientable, irreducible 3-manifolds $M$ such that $b_1(M)=1$ and $\pi_1(M)$ has weight 1, but $M$ is not the result of Dehn surgery along a knot in the 3-sphere. This answers a question…

We construct the first examples of non-smoothable self-homeomorphisms of smooth $4$-manifolds with boundary that fix the boundary and act trivially on homology. As a corollary, we construct self-diffeomorphisms of $4$-manifolds with…

We construct an infinite family of simply connected, pairwise nondiffeomorphic 4-manifolds, all homeomorphic to 3CP^2 blown up at 9 points.

We construct smooth 4-manifolds homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to CP^2+6CP^2-bar.

We give a formula for the duality structure of the 3-manifold obtained by doing zero-framed surgery along a knot in the 3-sphere, starting from a diagram of the knot. We then use this to give a combinatorial algorithm for computing the…

The cosmetic surgery conjecture is a longstanding conjecture in 3-manifold theory. We present a theorem about exceptional cosmetic surgery for homology spheres. Along the way we prove that if the surgery is not a small seifert…

Consider a dihedral cover $f: Y\to X$ with $X$ and $Y$ four-manifolds and $f$ branched along an oriented surface embedded in $X$ with isolated cone singularities. We prove that only a slice knot can arise as the unique singularity on an…