Related papers: Seifert surfaces in the 4-ball

We show that two hypersurfaces in a manifold are related by a sequence of embedded cobordisms if and only if they represent the same homology class. By applying handle decompositions we turn these cobordisms into a sequence of embedded…

We develop a version of Seiberg--Witten Floer cohomology/homotopy type for a spin$^c$ 4-manifold with boundary and with an involution which reverses the spin$^c$ structure, as well as a version of Floer cohomology/homotopy type for oriented…

First steps towards a classification of irreducible symplectic 4-folds whose integral 2-cohomology with 4-tuple cup product is isomorphic to that of Hilb^2(K3). We prove that any such 4-fold deforms to an irreducible symplectic 4-fold of…

In this paper we study embeddings of oriented connected closed surfaces in $\mathbb S^3$. We define a complete invariant, the fundamental span, for such embeddings, generalizing the notion of the peripheral system of a knot group. From the…

Consider a smooth $4$-manifold $X$ and a diffeomorphism $f : X \to X$. We give an obstruction in the form of an adjunction inequality for an embedded surface in $X$ to be isotopic to its image under $f$. It follows that the minimal genus of…

This is a "software upgrade" to a paper originally published in 1976, with cleaner statements and improved proofs. The main result is that, in a Haken 3-manifold, the space of all incompressible surfaces in a single isotopy class is…

Let $K\subseteq S^3$ be a knot with exterior $E_K$, and denote by $\rho\colon \pi_1(E_K)\twoheadrightarrow G$ a quotient of its group. We give a sharp obstruction to the existence of a connected, oriented, smooth surface $F\subseteq B^4$…

We study symplectic surfaces in ruled symplectic 4-manifolds which are disjoint from a given symplectic section. As a consequence we see that, in any symplectic 4-manifold, two homologous symplectic surfaces which are sufficiently C^0 close…

We study algebraic structures of certain submonoids of the monoid of homology cylinders over a surface and the homology cobordism groups, using Reidemeister torsion with non-commutative coefficients. The submonoids consist of ones whose…

Let K be a knot in S^3 of genus g and let n>0. We show that if rk HFK(K,g) < 2^{n+1} (where HFK denotes knot Floer homology), in particular if K is an alternating knot such that the leading coefficient a_g of its Alexander polynomial…

The topology of Stein surfaces and contact 3-manifolds is studied by means of handle decompositions. A simple characterization of homeomorphism types of Stein surfaces is obtained --- they correspond to open handlebodies with all handles of…

We study the monodromy diffeomorphism of Milnor fibrations of isolated complex surface singularities, by computing the family Seiberg--Witten invariant of Seifert-fibered Dehn twists using recent advances in monopole Floer homology. More…

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…

We give a new proof of an isoperimetric inequality for a family of closed surfaces, which have Gaussian curvature identically equal to one wherever the surface is smooth. These surfaces are formed from a convex, spherical polygon, with each…

This paper addresses several isotopy problems on $4$-manifolds. First, we classify the isotopy classes of embeddings of $\Sigma$ in $\Sigma\times S^2$ that are geometrically dual to $\{\mbox{pt}\}\times S^2$, where $\Sigma$ is a closed…

Some generalizations and variations of the Fintushel-Stern rim surgery are known to produce smoothly knotted surfaces. We show that if the fundamental groups of their complements are cyclic, then these surfaces are topologically unknotted.…

We classify topological $4$-manifolds with boundary and fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}$, under some assumptions on the boundary. We apply this to classify surfaces in simply-connected $4$-manifolds with $S^3$ boundary, where the fundamental…

We describe a Python module that we developed to calculate cobordism maps induced on Khovanov homology. As applications of our program, we compute these maps for all incompressible Seifert surfaces for prime knots up to 10 crossings, and…

We derive basic differential geometric formulae for surfaces in hyperbolic space represented as envelopes of horospheres. The dual notion of parallel hypersurfaces is also studied. The representation is applied to prove existence and…

We combine Freedman's topology with Eliashberg's holomorphic theory to construct Stein neighborhood systems in complex surfaces, and use these to study various notions of convexity and concavity. Every tame, topologically embedded 2-complex…