Related papers: On four-manifolds without 1- and 3-handles

We show that, given $d \geq 4$ and two closed connected oriented PL $4$-manifolds $M$ and $N$ such that $N$ has a handle decomposition with no $1$- and $3$-handles, there exists a $d$-fold simple branched covering $p \colon M \darrow{d} N$…

Closed (and simply-connected) manifolds whose dimensions are larger than 4 are central geometric objects in classical algebraic topology and differential topology. They have been classified via algebraic and abstract objects. On the other…

Let $M$ be $\CP#2\CPb$, $3\CP#4\CPb$ or $(2n-1)\CP#2n\CPb$ for any integer $n\geq 3$. We construct an irreducible symplectic 4-manifold homeomorphic to $M$ and also an infinite family of pairwise non-diffeomorphic irreducible non-symplectic…

We present explicit algorithms for simplifying the topology of indefinite fibrations on 4-manifolds, which include broken Lefschetz fibrations and indefinite Morse 2-functions. The algorithms consist of sequences of moves, which modify…

There are six orientable, compact, flat 3-manifolds that can occur as cusp cross-sections of hyperbolic 4-manifolds. This paper provides criteria for exactly when a given commensurability class of arithmetic hyperbolic 4-manifolds contains…

This article presents families of 7-dimensional closed and simply-connected manifolds and fold maps on them such that squares of 2nd integral cohomology classes may not be divisible by 2. Fold maps are higher dimensional versions of Morse…

One can define the complexity of a smooth 4-manifold as the minimal sum of the number of disks, strands and crossings in a Kirby diagram. Martelli proved that the number of homeomorphism classes of complexity less than n grows as $n^2$. In…

Two 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic if they become diffeomorphic after connected sum with S^2 x S^2's. This paper shows that two closed, orientable, homotopy equivalent, smooth 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic, provided a certain…

We prove that there exist infinitely many contractible compact smooth $4$-manifolds $C$ that admit absolutely exotic diffeomorphisms of infinite order in $\pi_0(\mathrm{Diff}(C))$. By ``absolutely", we mean that isotopies are not required…

A Riemannian manifold is called geometrically formal if the wedge product of any two harmonic forms is again harmonic. We classify geometrically formal compact 4-manifolds with nonnegative sectional curvature. If the sectional curvature is…

We describe the topological structure of closed manifolds of dimension no less than four which admit Morse-Smale diffeomorphisms such that its non-wandering set contains any number of sink periodic points, and any number of source periodic…

We prove that a PL manifold admits a handle decomposition into handles of index $\le k$ if and only if $M$ is $k$-stacked, i.e., it admits a PL triangulation in which all $(d-k-1)$-faces are on $\partial M$. We use this to solve a problem…

We prove that there are homology three-spheres that bound definite four-manifolds, but any such bounding four-manifold must be built out of many handles. The argument uses the homology cobordism invariant $\Gamma$ from instanton Floer…

Recently Gay and Kirby described a new decomposition of smooth closed $4$-manifolds called a trisection. This paper generalises Heegaard splittings of $3$-manifolds and trisections of $4$-manifolds to all dimensions, using triangulations as…

Kreck and Schafer produced the first examples of stably diffeomorphic closed smooth 4-manifolds which are not homotopy equivalent. They were constructed by applying the doubling construction to 2-complexes over certain finite abelian groups…

In this paper, we show that if a closed, connected, oriented 3-manifold M = M1#M2 admits a perfect discrete Morse function, then one can decompose this function as perfect discrete Morse functions on M_1 and M_2. We also give an explicit…

We show that the classification up to homeomorphism of closed topological nonorientable 4-manifolds with fundamental group of order 2 due to Hambleton-Kreck-Teichner can be used to classify a large set of such 4-manifolds with cyclic…

Let $X$ be a connected compact 3-manifold with non-empty boundary. Consider the boundary $M$ of $X\times D^2$. $M$ is a 4-dimensional closed manifold and has the same fundamental group as $X$. Various examples of $X$ are known for which a…

We construct a new family {K_n} of simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds with the property c_1^2(K_n)/chi(K_n) -> 9 (as n goes to infinity).

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…