Related papers: Homogeneous braids are visually prime
We define homotopy-theoretic invariants of knots in prime 3-manifolds. Fix a knot J in a prime 3-manifold M. Call a knot K in M concordant to J if it cobounds a properly embedded annulus with J in MxI, and call K J-characteristic if there…
The relationships between braid ordering and the geometry of its closure is studied. We prove that if an essential closed surface $F$ in the complements of closed braid has relatively small genus with respect to the Dehornoy floor of the…
We study Miyaoka-type semistability criteria for principal Higgs G-bundles E on complex projective manifolds of any dimension. We prove that E has the property of being semistable after pullback to any projective curve if and only if…
We study open books on three manifolds which are compatible with an overtwisted contact structure. We show that the existence of certain arcs, called sobering arcs, is a sufficient condition for an open book to be overtwisted, and is…
We consider the Blum medial axis of a region in $\mathbb R^n$ with piecewise smooth boundary and examine its "rigidity properties", by which we mean properties preserved under diffeomorphisms of the regions preserving the medial axis. There…
Among other things, we prove the following two topologcal statements about closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds. First, every rational second homology class of a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold has a positve integral multiple represented by an…
We show that every co--orientable taut foliation F of an orientable, atoroidal 3-manifold admits a transverse essential lamination. If this transverse lamination is a foliation G, the pair F,G are the unstable and stable foliation…
We study several properties of multihomogeneous prime ideals. We show that the multigraded generic initial ideal of a prime has very special properties, for instance, its radical is Cohen-Macaulay. We develop a comprehensive study of…
We complete the classification (started by Bray and the second author) of all closed 3-manifolds with Yamabe invariant greater than that of $\RP^3$, by showing that such manifolds are either $S^3$ or finite connected sums $# m(S^2 \times…
In 1992, Reid asked whether hyperbolic 3-manifolds with the same geodesic length spectra are necessarily commensurable. While this is known to be true for arithmetic hyperbolic 3-manifolds, the non-arithmetic case is still open. Building…
Let H be a homeomorphism of the open annulus isotopic to the identity which admits a lift h to the plane without fixed point. We show that h admits a Brouwer line which is a lift of a properly imbedded line joining one end to the other in…
Suppose $S_{1}$ and $S_{2}$ are orientable surfaces of finite topological type such that $S_{1}$ has genus at least $3$ and the complexity of $S_{1}$ is an upper bound of the complexity of $S_{2}$. Let $\varphi : \mathcal{C}(S_{1})…
A simple braid is a positive braid that can be drawn so that any two strands cross at most once. We prove that as $n \to \infty$, the proportion of simple braids on $n$ strands that have positive topological entropy tends toward $100\%$.…
We show that the monodromy of Klassen's genus two open book for $P^2 \times S^1$ is the $Y$-homeomorphism of Lickorish, which is also known as the crosscap slide. Similarly, we show that $S^2 \widetilde{\times} S^1$ admits a genus two open…
Menasco showed that a non-split, prime, alternating link that is not a 2-braid is hyperbolic in $S^3$. We prove a similar result for links in closed thickened surfaces $S \times I$. We define a link to be fully alternating if it has an…
It is known that every closed oriented 3-manifold is homology cobordant to a hyperbolic 3-manifold. By contrast we show that many homology cobordism classes contain no Seifert fibered 3-manifold. This is accomplished by determining the…
Let $M$ be a manifold with a volume form $\omega$ and $f : M \to M$ be a diffeomorphism of class $\mathcal{C}^1$ that preserves $\omega$. In this paper, we do \textit{not} assume $f$ is $\mathcal{C}^1$-generic. We have two main themes in…
The question of whether a representation of Artin's pure braid group is faithful is translated to certain properties of the Lie algebra arising from the descending central series of the pure braid group, and thus the Vassiliev invariants of…
We define the property (D) for nontrivial knots. We show that the fundamental group of the manifold obtained by Dehn surgery on a knot $K$ with property (D) with slope $\frac{p}{q}\ge 2g(K)-1$ is not left orderable. By making full use of…
We address primary decomposition conjectures for knot concordance groups, which predict direct sum decompositions into primary parts. We show that the smooth concordance group of topologically slice knots has a large subgroup for which the…