Related papers: From diffeomorphisms to exotic phenomena in small …
Suppose that $X,X'$ are simply-connected closed exotic 4-manifolds. It is well-known that $X'$ is obtained by an order 2 cork twist of $X$. We give an infinite exotic family of 4-manifolds not generated by any infinite order cork. This is…
Since the first work on exotic smoothness in physics, it was folklore to assume a direct influence of exotic smoothness to quantum gravity. In the second paper, we calculate the "smoothness structure" part of the path integral in quantum…
By using corks we construct diffeomorphic ribbon disks $D\subset B^{4}$, which are non-isotopic rel boundary to each other.
This article presents the constructions of new infinite families of smooth 4-manifolds with the property that any two manifolds in the same family are homeomorphic and, from their construction, seem to be quite different, but cannot be…
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…
This thesis discusses exotic 7-spheres, i.e. manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to the ordinary 7-sphere, using a set of analytical and computational tools from theoretical physics. The theory of fibre bundles and…
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…
In this article, we show that, at least for non-simply connected case, there exist an infinite family of nondiffeomorphic symplectic 4-manifolds with the same Seiberg-Witten invariants. The main techniques are knot surgery and a covering…
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 interrelations between a topology structure of closed manifolds (orientable and non-orientable) of the dimension $n\geq 4$ and the structure of the non-wandering set of regular homeomorphisms, in particular, Morse-Smale…
We show that no exotic $\mathbb{R}^4$ admits a complete Riemannian metric with uniformly positive isotropic curvature and with bounded geometry. This is essentially a corollary of the main result in [Hu1], and was stated in [Hu2] without…
In this brief note, we show that there exist smooth 4-manifolds (with nonempty boundary) containing pairs of exotically knotted 2-spheres that remain exotic after one (either external or internal) stabilization. It follows that the ``one is…
4-manifolds have special topological properties which can be used to get a different view on quantum mechanics. One important property (connected with exotic smoothness) is the natural appearance of 3-manifold wild embeddings (Alexanders…
A compact oriented 4-manifold is defined to be of ``superconformal simple type'' if certain polynomials in the basic classes (constructed using the Seiberg-Witten invariants) vanish identically. We show that all known 4-manifolds of…
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that, at least for nonsimply connected 4-manifolds, the Seiberg-Witten invariant alone does not determine diffeomorphism type within the same homeomorphism type.
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 reprove and strengthen some old difficult theorems of 4-manifolds by the aid of recently discovered modern tools, which involve contact structures on 3-manifolds, compact Stein domains, etc.
We construct an invariant of closed ${\rm spin}^c$ 4-manifolds using families of Seiberg-Witten equations. This invariant is formulated as a cohomology class on a certain abstract simplicial complex consisting of embedded surfaces of a…
The author recently proved the existence of an infinite order cork: a compact, contractible submanifold $C$ of a 4-manifold and an infinite order diffeomorphism $f$ of $\partial C$ such that cutting out $C$ and regluing it by distinct…
We calculate the Seiberg-Witten invariants of branched covers of prime degree, where the branch locus consists of embedded spheres. Aside from the formula itself, our calculations give rise to some new constraints on configurations of…