Related papers: One stabilization is not enough for contractible 4…

We study the set $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ of framed smoothly slice links which lie on the boundary of the complement of a 1-handlebody in a closed, simply connected, smooth 4-manifold $M$. We show that $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ is…

It is one of the most important facts in 4-dimensional topology that not every spherical homology class of a 4-manifold can be represented by an embedded sphere. In 1978, M. Freedman and R. Kirby showed that in the simply connected case,…

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…

We extend the notion of (smooth) stable generalized complex structures to allow for an anticanonical section with normal self-crossing singularities. This weakening not only allows for a number of natural examples in higher dimensions but…

We construct families of manifolds that have pairs of genus $g$ Heegaard splittings that must be stabilized roughly $g$ times to become equivalent. We also show that when two unstabilized, boundary-unstabilized Heegaard splittings are…

We construct infinite families of topologically isotopic but smoothly distinct knotted spheres in many simply connected 4-manifolds that become smoothly isotopic after stabilizing by connected summing with $S^2 \times S^2$, and as a…

Eli, Hom, and Lidman showed that the manifolds produced by attaching the simplest positive Casson handle $CH^+$ to a slice disc complement of the ribbon knot $T_{2,n}\#T_{2,-n}$ for $n\ge3$ and odd, and removing the boundary, form a…

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 introduce a variant of contact homology for convex open contact manifolds. As an application, we prove the existence of (in fact, infinitely many) exotic tight contact structures on $\mathbb{R}^{2n-1}$ for all $n>2$.

Jang has proven a remarkable classification of $6$-dimensional manifolds having an almost complex circle action with $4$ fixed points. Jang classifies the weights and associated multigraph into six cases, leaving the existence of connected…

Kronheimer-Mrowka recently proved that the Dehn twist along a 3-sphere in the neck of $K3\#K3$ is not smoothly isotopic to the identity. This provides a new example of self-diffeomorphisms on 4-manifolds that are isotopic to the identity in…

We study the relationship between exotic R^4's and Stein surfaces as it applies to smoothing theory on more general open 4-manifolds. In particular, we construct the first known examples of large exotic R^4's that embed in Stein surfaces.…

Characterizing face-number-related invariants of a given class of simplicial complexes has been a central topic in combinatorial topology. In this regard, one of the well-known invariants is $g_2$. Let $K$ be a normal $3$-pseudomanifold…

We prove that the examples by Smith and McMullen-Taubes provide infinitely many counterexamples to one direction of Donaldson's 4-6 question and the closely related Stabilising Conjecture. These are the first known counterexamples. In the…

This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we use symplectic homology to distinguish the contact structures on the Brieskorn manifolds $\Sigma(2l,2,2,2)$, which contact homology cannot distinguish. This answers a question from…

We investigate certain $4$-dimensional analogues of the classical $3$-dimensional Dehn's lemma, giving examples where such analogues do or do not hold, in the smooth and topological categories. In particular, we show that an essential…

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

Suppose $k$ is an algebraically closed field of characteristic two, let $A_4$ be an alternating group on four letters, and let $H$ be the unique Sylow two-subgroup of $A_4$. Let $X$ be a smooth projective irreducible curve over $k$ with a…

We describe a collection of constructions which illustrate a panoply of ``exotic'' smooth 4-manifolds.

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…