Related papers: Smooth structures on four-manifolds with finite cy…

We introduce a new technique that is used to show that the complex projective plane blown up at 6, 7, or 8 points has infinitely many distinct smooth structures. None of these smooth structures admit smoothly embedded spheres with…

We prove:(1) the existence, for every integer n > 3, of a noncompact smooth n-dimensional topological manifold whose diffeomorphism group contains an isomorphic copy of every finitely presented group; (2) a finiteness theorem on finite…

We show that closed, connected 4-manifolds up to connected sum with copies of the complex projective plane are classified in terms of the fundamental group, the orientation character and an extension class involving the second homotopy…

We give a necessary and suffcient condition for almost-flat manifolds with cyclic holonomy to admit a Spin structure. Using this condition we find all 4-dimensional orientable almost- flat manifolds with cyclic holonomy that do not admit a…

We show that minimal symplectic 4--manifolds with $b_2^+ >1$ and with residually finite fundamental groups are irreducible. We also give examples of irreducible orientable four--manifolds with indefinite intersection forms which are not…

For each integer $n$ we construct a simply connected $4$-manifold $X$ admitting a smoothly embedded surface $\Sigma$ of self intersection number $n$ such that the complement of the surface has non-trivial fundamental group. This answers a…

For every N > 0 there exists a group of deficiency less than -N that arises as the fundamental group of a smooth homology 4-sphere and also as the fundamental group of the complement of a compact contractible submanifold of the 4-sphere. A…

We construct smooth manifolds with order two $\pi_1$ and even intersection forms which are irreducible, meaning they do not decompose into non-trivial connected sums. Their intersection forms being even implies that their universal covers…

Some generalizations and variations of the Fintushel-Stern rim surgery are known to produce smoothly knotted surfaces. We show that if the fundamental groups of their complements are cyclic, then these surfaces are topologically unknotted.…

We study locally flat, compact, oriented surfaces in $4$-manifolds whose exteriors have infinite cyclic fundamental group. We give algebraic topological criteria for two such surfaces, with the same genus $g$, to be related by an ambient…

We show that an odd dimensional closed manifold with positive curvature cannot contain an incompressible real projective plane in the sense that there is no map of the projective plane into the manifold which is nontrivial on both first and…

Any smooth, closed oriented 4-manifold has a surface diagram of arbitrarily high genus g>2 that specifies it up to diffeomorphism. The goal of this paper is to prove the following statement: For any smooth, closed oriented 4-manifold M,…

In this paper, we investigate existence of inequivalent smooth structures on closed smooth non-orientable 4-manifolds building upon results of Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson, Fintushel-Stern, Gompf, and Stolz. We add to the number of known…

We classify up to diffeomorphism all smooth manifolds homeomorphic to the complex projective m-space $\mathbb{C}P^{m}$ for $m = 5, 6, 7$ and $8$. As an application, for $m = 7$ and $8$, we compute the smooth tangential structure set of…

For every integer g greater than or equal to 2, there exist infinitely many pairwise nonhomeomorphic smooth 4-manifolds that admit genus-g Lefschetz fibrations over S^2 but do not carry any complex structure with either orientation. This…

We discover a simple construction of a four-dimensional family of smooth surfaces of general type with $p_g(S)=q(S)=0$, $K^2_S=3$ with cyclic fundamental group $C_{14}$. We use a degeneration of the surfaces in this family to find…

Given a closed, smooth 4-manifold $X$ and self-diffeomorphism $f$ that is topologically pseudo-isotopic to the identity, we study the question of whether $f$ is moreover smoothly pseudo-isotopic to the identity. If the fundamental group of…

We construct uncountably many discrete groups of type $FP$; in particular we construct groups of type $FP$ that do not embed in any finitely presented group. We compute the ordinary, $\ell^2$- and compactly-supported cohomology of these…

We give two constructions of surfaces in simply-connected 4-manifolds with non simply-connected complements. One is an iteration of the twisted rim surgery introduced by the first author. We also construct, for any group G satisfying some…

We classify, up to diffeomorphism, all closed smooth manifolds homeomorphic to the complex projective $n$-space $\mathbb{C}\textbf{P}^n$, where $n=3$ and $4$. Let $M^{2n}$ be a closed smooth $2n$-manifold homotopy equivalent to…