Related papers: Non-split, alternating links bound unique Seifert …

We answer a question of Livingston from 1982 by producing Seifert surfaces of the same genus for a knot in $S^3$ that do not become isotopic when their interiors are pushed into $B^4$. In particular, we identify examples where the surfaces…

In this paper, we study stable equivalence of exotically knotted surfaces in 4-manifolds, surfaces that are topologically isotopic but not smoothly isotopic. We prove that any pair of embedded surfaces in the same homology class become…

We give families of knots and links with pairs of Seifert surfaces that are topologically non-isotopic in $D^4$. This generalizes the main example of Hayden-Kim-Miller-Park-Sundberg and the proof is similarly based on the double branched…

Internal stabilization adds a trivial handle to an embedded surface in a coordinate chart. It is known that any pair of smoothly knotted surfaces in a simply-connected $4$-manifold become smoothly isotopic after sufficiently many internal…

Expanding on work by Conway, Orson, and Powell, we study the isotopy classes rel. boundary of nonorientable, compact, locally flatly embedded surfaces in $D^4$ with knot group $\mathbb{Z}_2$. In particular we show that if two such surfaces…

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…

Let $L$ be a non-split prime alternating link with $n>0$ crossings. We show that for each fixed $g$, the number of genus-$g$ Seifert surfaces for $L$ is bounded by an explicitly given polynomial in $n$. The result also holds for all…

This article is concerned with locally flatly immersed surfaces in simply-connected $4$-manifolds where the complement of the surface has fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}$. Once the genus and number of double points are fixed, we classify such…

We use composition of binary quadratic forms to systematically create pairs of Seifert surfaces that are non-isotopic in the four-ball. Our main topological result employs Gauss composition to classify the pairs of binary quadratic forms…

We construct the first examples of non-smoothable self-homeomorphisms of smooth $4$-manifolds with boundary that fix the boundary and act trivially on homology. As a corollary, we construct self-diffeomorphisms of $4$-manifolds with…

This paper investigates the exotic phenomena exhibited by links of disconnected surfaces with boundary that are properly embedded in the 4-ball. Our main results provide two different constructions of exotic pairs of surface links that are…

We show that two properly embedded compact surfaces in an orientable 4-manifold are cobordant if and only if they are $\mathbb{Z}/2$-homologous and either the 4-manifold has boundary or the surfaces have the same normal Euler number. If the…

We construct a family of pairs of non-isotopic symplectic surfaces in the standard symplectic $4$-disk such that they are bounded by the same transverse knot in the standard contact $3$-sphere and fundamental groups of their complements are…

In this paper we show that there are two symplectic surfaces in the 4-ball which bound the same transverse knot, have the same topology (as abstract surfaces), and are distinguished by the fundamental groups of their complements.

We give an infinite family of embeddings of $\mathbb{R} P^2$ to $S^4$ such that they are mutually topologically isotopic however are not smoothly isotopic to each other. Moreover, they are topologically isotopic to the standard $P^2$-knot.…

We discuss differences between genera of smooth and locally-flat non-orientable surfaces in the 4-ball with boundary a given torus knot or 2-bridge knot. In particular, we establish that a result by Batson on the smooth non-orientable…

I prove that any two smooth collections of spanning 3-discs for the trivial 2-link in $S^4$ become smoothly isotopic rel. boundary after pushing them into $D^5$.

Using 1-twist rim surgery, we construct infinitely many smoothly embedded, orientable surfaces in the 4-ball bounding a knot in the 3-sphere that are pairwise topologically isotopic, but not ambient diffeomorphic. We distinguish the…

We establish a general `gluing theorem', which states roughly that if two nondegenerate constant mean curvature surfaces are juxtaposed, so that their tangent planes are parallel and very close to one another, but oppositely oriented, then…

In this paper, we study surfaces embedded in $4$-manifolds. We give a complete set of moves relating banded unlink diagrams of isotopic surfaces in an arbitrary $4$-manifold. This extends work of Swenton and Kearton-Kurlin in $S^4$. As an…