Related papers: Exotic almost complex circle actions on 6-manifold…

We present classification results for exceptional Legendrian realisations of torus knots. These are the first results of that kind for non-trivial topological knot types. Enumeration results of Ding-Li-Zhang concerning tight contact…

Among the allowed representations of extended supersymmetry in six dimensions there are exotic chiral multiplets that, instead of a graviton, contain mixed-symmetry spin-2 tensor fields. Notably, an $\mathcal{N}=(4,0)$ multiplet has a four…

We find new examples of compact Spin(7)-manifolds using a construction of Joyce. The essential ingredient in Joyce's construction is a Calabi-Yau 4-orbifold with particular singularities admitting an antiholomorphic involution, which fixes…

By a classical result of Jordan, each finite subgroup G of a complex linear group GL_n(C) has an abelian subgroup whose index in G is bounded by a constant depending only on n. We consider the problem if this remains true for finite…

We study the chiral ring of four-dimensional superconformal field theories obtained by wrapping M5-branes on a complex curve inside a Calabi-Yau three-fold. We propose a field theoretic construction of all the theories found by Bah, Beem,…

Fintushel-Stern's knot surgery gave many pairs of exotic manifolds, which are homeomorphic but non-diffeomorphic. We show that if an elliptic fibration has two parallel, oppositely oriented vanishing circles (for example $S^2\times S^2$ or…

Consider the cyclic group C_2 of order two acting by complex-conjugation on the unit circle S^1. The main result is that a finitely dominated manifold W of dimension > 4 admits a cocompact, free, discontinuous action by the infinite…

We study a symplectic surgery operation we call unchaining, which effectively reduces the second Betti number and the symplectic Kodaira dimension at the same time. Using unchaining, we give novel constructions of symplectic Calabi-Yau…

For a generic anti-canonical hypersurface in each smooth toric Fano 4-fold with rank 2 Picard group, we prove there exist three isolated rational curves in it. Moreover, for all these 4-folds except one, the contractions of generic…

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…

The space of orientation-compatible almost complex structures on the six-dimensional sphere naturally contains a copy of seven-dimensional real projective space. We show that the inclusion induces an isomorphism on fundamental groups and…

We describe an algorithm which has enabled us to give a complete list, without repetitions, of all closed oriented irreducible 3-manifolds of complexity up to 9. More interestingly, we have actually been able to give a "name" to each such…

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

Let M be a six dimensional manifold, endowed with a cohomogeneity one action of G= SU_2 x SU_2, and M_reg its subset of regular points. We show that M_reg admits a smooth, 2-parameter family of G-invariant, non-isometric strict nearly…

We consider compact connected six dimensional symplectic manifolds with Hamiltonian SU(2) or SO(3) actions with cyclic principal stabilizers. We classify such manifolds up to equivariant symplectomorphisms.

We construct metrics of positive scalar curvature on manifolds with circle actions. One of our main results is that there exist $S^1$-invariant metrics of positive scalar curvature on every $S^1$-manifold which has a fixed point component…

Recently Shiing-Shen Chern suggested that the six dimensional sphere $\mathbb{S}^6$ has no complex structure. Here we explore the relations between his arguments and Yang-Mills theories. In particular, we propose that Chern's approach is…

The class of special generic maps is a natural class of smooth maps containing Morse functions on spheres with exactly two singular points and canonical projections of unit spheres. We find new restrictions on such maps on $6$-dimensional…

We prove that in closed almost complex manifolds of any dimension, generic perturbations of the almost complex structure suffice to achieve transversality for all unbranched multiple covers of simple pseudoholomorphic curves with…

We prove that if a closed, smooth, simply-connected 4-manifold with a circle action admits an almost non-negatively curved sequence of invariant Riemannian metrics, then it also admits a non-negatively curved Riemannian metric invariant…