Related papers: Asphericity of cubical presentations: the 2-dimens…

Let $M$ be a closed, connected, orientable topological four-manifold with $H_1(M)$ nontrivial and free abelian, $b_2(M)\ne 0, 2$, and $\chi(M)\ne 0$. We show that if $G$ is a finite group of 2-rank $\le 1$ which admits a homologically…

We consider numerical semigroups associated with normal weighted homogeneous surface singularities with rational homology sphere links. We say that a semigroup is representable if it can be realized in this way. In this article, we study…

We define a bicategory with \'etale, locally compact groupoids as objects and suitable correspondences, that is, spaces with two commuting actions as arrows; the 2-arrows are injective, equivariant continuous maps. We prove that the usual…

Standard results from non-abelian cohomology theory specialize to a theory of torsors and stacks for cosimplicial groupoids. The space of global sections of the stack completion of a cosimplicial groupoid $G$ is weakly equivalent to the…

We show that mapping class groups associated to all types of real algebraic curves are virtual duality groups. We also deduce some results about the orbifold homotopy groups of the moduli spaces of real algebraic curves. We achieve these…

Deformation K-theory associates to each discrete group G a spectrum built from spaces of finite dimensional unitary representations of G. In all known examples, this spectrum is 2-periodic above the rational cohomological dimension of G…

We show that diagram groups can be viewed as fundamental groups of spaces of positive paths on directed 2-complexes (these spaces of paths turn out to be classifying spaces). Thus diagram groups are analogs of second homotopy groups,…

We prove that 2-dimensional simplicial complexes whose first homology group is trivial have topological embeddings in 3-space if and only if there are embeddings of their link graphs in the plane that are compatible at the edges and they…

In this article, we introduce a new object, a virtual quadratic space, and its group of isometries. They are presented as natural generalizations of quadratic spaces and orthogonal groups. It is then shown that by replacing quadratic spaces…

We consider the space of all configurations of finitely many (potentially nested) circles in the plane. We prove that this space is aspherical, and compute the fundamental group of each of its connected components. It turns out these…

Let $G$ be a connected reductive group over a finite field $\mathfrak{f}$ of order $q$. When $q$ is small, we make further assumptions on $G$. Then we determine precisely when $G(\mathfrak{f})$ admits irreducible, cuspidal representations…

We show that any Abelian module category over the (degenerate or quantum) Heisenberg category satisfying suitable finiteness conditions may be viewed as a 2-representation over a corresponding Kac-Moody 2-category (and vice versa). This…

We define and study homotopy groups of cubical sets. To this end, we give four definitions of homotopy groups of a cubical set, prove that they are equivalent, and further that they agree with their topological analogues via the geometric…

A quasitoric manifold is a $2n$-dimensional compact smooth manifold with a locally standard action of an $n$-dimensional torus whose orbit space is a simple polytope. In this article, we classify quasitoric manifolds with the second Betti…

Let F be a non-archimedean local field of odd residual characteristic p. Let G be a (connected) reductive group that splits over a tamely ramified field extension of F. We show that a construction analogous to Yu's construction of complex…

We show that two orientable, four-dimensional folded symplectic toric manifolds are isomorphic provided that their orbit spaces have trivial degree-two integral cohomology and there exists a diffeomorphism of the orbit spaces (as manifolds…

Group presentations are implicit descriptions of 2-dimensional cell complexes with only one vertex. While such complexes are usually sufficient for topological investigations of groups, multi-vertex complexes are often preferable when the…

Let $M$ be a simply connected spin manifold of dimension at least six which admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. We show that the observer moduli space of positive scalar curvature metrics on $M$ has non-trivial higher homotopy…

An idea to present a classical Lie group of positive dimension by generators and relations sounds dubious, but happens to be fruitful. The isometry groups of classical geometries admit elegant and useful presentations by generators and…

We show that in all dimensions >7 there are closed aspherical manifolds whose fundamental groups have nontrivial center but do not possess any topological circle actions. This disproves a conjectured converse (proposed by Conner and…