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Kreck's modified surgery theory reduces the classification of closed, connected 4-manifolds, up to connect sum with some number of copies of $S^2\times S^2$, to a series of bordism questions. We implement this in the case of unorientable…

Let $\omega$ denote an area form on $S^2$. Consider the closed symplectic 4-manifold $M=(S^2\times S^2, A\omega \oplus a \omega)$ with $0<a<A$. We show that there are families of displaceable Lagrangian tori $L_{0,x},\, L_{1,x} \subset M$,…

We show that every strongly-cyclic branched covering of a (1,1)-knot is a Dunwoody manifold. This result, together with the converse statement previously obtained by Grasselli and Mulazzani, proves that the class of Dunwoody manifolds…

Two constructions of contact manifolds are presented: (i) products of S^1 with manifolds admitting a suitable decomposition into two exact symplectic pieces and (ii) fibre connected sums along isotropic circles. Baykur has found a…

Using the relation between Khovanov homology and the Heegaard Floer homology of branched double covers, we show how Khovanov homology can be used to establish tightness of branched double covers of certain transverse knots. We give examples…

We present an infinite sequence of smooth embeddings of a connected sum of 6 projective planes in the 4-sphere, which are all ambient homeomorphic, but pairwise ambient non-diffeomorphic. The double covers of the 4-sphere ramified along…

Any two homologous surfaces of the same genus embedded in a smooth 4-manifold X with simply-connected complements are shown to be smoothly isotopic in the connected sum of X and the product of a 2-sphere with itself, if the surfaces are…

We study the homotopy right Kan extension of homotopy sheaves on a category to its free cocompletion, i.e. to its category of presheaves. Any pretopology on the original category induces a canonical pretopology of generalised coverings on…

We study closed, oriented 4-manifolds whose fundamental group is that of a closed, oriented, aspherical 3-manifold. We show that two such 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic if and only if they have the same w_2-type and their equivariant…

We give constraints on smooth families of 4-manifolds with boundary using Manolescu's Seiberg-Witten Floer stable homotopy type, provided that the fiberwise restrictions of the families to the boundaries are trivial families of 3-manifolds.…

We show that the homotopy type of a finite oriented Poincar\'{e} 4-complex is determined by its quadratic 2-type provided its fundamental group is finite and has a dihedral Sylow 2-subgroup. By combining with results of Hambleton-Kreck and…

We consider two pairs: the standard unknotted $n$-sphere in $S^{n+2}$, and the product of two $p$-spheres trivially embedded in $S^{2p+2}$, and study orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of these pairs. Pseudo-isotopy classes of such…

The twisted torus knots K(p, q; r, s) are obtained by performing a sequence of s full twists on r adjacent strands of (p, q)-torus knots. Morimoto asked whether all twisted torus knots with essential tori in the exterior fit into one of two…

We relate degree one grasper families of embedded circles to various constructions of diffeomorphisms found in the literature -- theta clasper classes of Watanabe, barbell diffeomorphisms of Budney and Gabai, and twin twists of Gay and…

Using symplectic topology and the Radon transform, we prove that smooth 4-dimensional projective planes are diffeomorphic to $\mathbb{CP}^2$. We define the notion of a plane curve in a smooth projective plane, show that plane curves in high…

After summarising the physical approach leading to twisted homotopy and after developing the cohomological approach further with respect to our previous work we propose a third alternative approach to twisted homotopy based on group…

In this manuscript we prove that if two cuspidal plane curves have equivalent braid monodromy factorizations, then they are smoothly isotopic in the plane. As a consequence of this and the Chisini conjecture, we obtain that if two…

We prove that all knots with unknotting number at most 21 are smoothly slice in the K3 surface. We also prove a more general statement for 4-manifolds that contain a plumbing tree of spheres. Our strategy is based on a flexible method to…

The cohomological rigidity problem for toric manifolds asks whether toric manifolds are diffeomorphic (or homeomorphic) if their integral cohomology rings are isomorphic. Many affirmative partial solutions to the problem have been obtained…

The existence of topologically slice knots that are of infinite order in the knot concordance group followed from Freedman's work on topological surgery and Donaldson's gauge theoretic approach to 4-manifolds. Here, as an application of…