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

We completely determine, up to homeomorphism, which simply connected compact oriented 4-manifolds admit scalar-flat, anti-self-dual Riemannian metrics. The key new ingredient is a proof that the connected sum of five reverse-oriented…

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…

We give new rational blowdown constructions of exotic CP^2#n(-CP^2) (5\leq n\leq 9) without using elliptic fibrations. We also show that our 4-manifolds admit handle decompositions without 1- and 3-handles, for 7\leq n\leq 9. A strategy for…

In an article from 2008, A. Akhmedov and B. D. Park constructed irreducible symplectic 4-manifolds homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to the manifolds CP^2#3CP^2bar and 3CP^2#5CP^2bar. These manifolds are constructed by using generalized…

We provide an infinite family of diffeomorphic symplectic forms on ruled surfaces, which are pairwise non-isotopic. This answers a uniqueness question regarding symplectic structures up to isotopy on closed symplectic four-manifolds.

We prove that a variety of examples of minimal complex surfaces admit exotic diffeomorphisms, providing the first known instances of exotic diffeomorphisms of irreducible 4-manifolds. We also give sufficient conditions for the boundary Dehn…

Let $M$ be a smooth, orientable, closed, connected $4$-manifold and suppose that $H_1(M;\mathbb{Z})$ is finitely generated and has no $2$-torsion. We give a homotopy decomposition of the suspension of $M$ in terms of spheres, Moore spaces…

We show that there is no algorithm to decide whether or not a given 4-manifold is homeomorphic to the connected sum of 12 copies of S^2 \times S^2.

The goal of this book is to characterize algebraically the closed 4-manifolds that fibre nontrivially or admit geometries in the sense of Thurston, or which are obtained by surgery on 2-knots, and to provide a reference for the topology of…

We consider mapping class groups \Gamma(M) = pi_0 Diff(M fix \partial M) of smooth compact simply connected oriented 4-manifolds M bounded by a collection of 3-spheres. We show that if M contains CP^2 (with either orientation) as a…

Let $R$ be a closed, oriented topological 4-manifold whose Euler characteristic and signature are denoted by $e$ and $\sigma$. We show that if $R$ has order two $\pi_1$, odd intersection form, and $2e + 3\sigma \geq 0$, then for all but…

This is a slightly altered version of the authors thesis from 2014. In the first main part we show that the quotient space of a compact, simply connected and nonnegatively curved Riemannian 4-manifold by an effective, isometric…

We have been interested in understanding the class of 7-dimensional closed and simply-connected manifolds in geometric and constructive ways. We have constructed explicit fold maps, which are higher dimensional versions of Morse functions,…

In this paper, we show that for any finite subgroup $\Gamma < O(4)$ acting freely on $\mathbb{S}^3$, there exists a $4$-dimensional complete Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ with ${\rm Ric}_g \geq 0 $, such that the asymptotic cone of $(M,g)$ is…

We study the set $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ of framed smoothly slice links which lie on the boundary of the complement of a 1-handlebody in a closed, simply connected, smooth 4-manifold $M$. We show that $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ is…

Let $X$ be a closed, simply-connected, smooth, spin 4-manifold whose intersection form is isomorphic to $n(-E_8)\bigoplus mH$, where $H$ is the hyperbolic form. In this paper, we prove that for $n$ such that $n\equiv 2 ~{\rm mod} ~4$, there…

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 show that recent results of Friedl-Vidussi and Chen imply that a symplectic manifold admits a fixed point free circle action if and only if it admits a symplectic circle action and we give a complete description of the symplectic cone in…

We show that there exist infinitely many simply connected compact Stein 4-manifolds with b_2=2 such that they are all homeomorhic but mutually non-diffeomorphic, and they are Stein fillings of the same contact 3-manifold on their…

We classify, up to homeomorphisms, the closed simply-connected 4-manifolds that admit a Riemannian metric for which averages of pairs of sectional curvatures of orthogonal planes are positive.