Related papers: Aspherical 4-manifolds with elementary amenable fu…
This note studies the Burnside problem for homeomorphism groups of compact connected manifolds. For surfaces, we prove that the identity component of the homeomorphism group is torsion-free precisely when the surface is not the sphere,…
We introduce Riemannian metrics of positive scalar curvature on manifolds with Baas-Sullivan singularities, prove a corresponding homology invariance principle and discuss admissible products. Using this theory we construct positive scalar…
We construct infinite families of topologically isotopic but smoothly distinct knotted spheres in many simply connected 4-manifolds that become smoothly isotopic after stabilizing by connected summing with $S^2 \times S^2$, and as a…
If a (possibly finite) compact Lie group acts effectively, locally linearly, and homologically trivially on a closed, simply-connected four-manifold with second Betti number at least three, then it must be isomorphic to a subgroup of S^1 x…
We obtain a description of Poisson--Furstenberg boundaries for (random walks on) fundamental groups of compact graph-manifolds. Together with previously known results due to V.A. Kaimanovich and others, this allows one to obtain…
For each odd integer r greater than one and not divisible by three we give explicit examples of infinite families of simply and tangentially homotopy equivalent but pairwise non-homeomorphic closed homogeneous spaces with fundamental group…
Inspired by a recent result of Levine-Lidman-Piccirillo, we construct infinitely many exotic smooth structures on some closed four-manifolds with definite intersection form and fundamental group isomorphic to $\Z /2\Z$. Similar…
We prove some sharp systolic inequalities for compact $3$-manifolds with boundary. They relate the (relative) homological systoles of the manifold to its scalar curvature and mean curvature of the boundary. In the equality case, the…
A family of closed manifolds is called cohomologically rigid if a cohomology ring isomorphism implies a diffeomorphism for any two manifolds in the family. We establish cohomological rigidity for large families of 3-dimensional and…
We investigate asymptotically flat manifolds with cone structure at infinity. We show that any such manifold M has a finite number of ends. For simply connected ends we classify all possible cones at infinity, except for the 4-dimensional…
In terms of Turaev's shadows, we provide a sufficient condition for a compact, smooth, acyclic 4-manifold with boundary the 3-sphere to be diffeomorphic to the standard 4-ball. As a consequence, we prove that if a compact, smooth, acyclic…
One can define what it means for a compact manifold with corners to be a "contractible manifold with contractible faces." Two combinatorially equivalent, contractible manifolds with contractible faces are diffeomorphic if and only if their…
Let $X$ be a compact Gromov-Hausdorff limit space of a collapsing sequence of compact $n$-manifolds, $M_i$, of Ricci curvature $\text{Ric}_{M_i}\ge -(n-1)$ and all points in $M_i$ are $(\delta,\rho)$-local rewinding Reifenberg points, or…
A new scheme is proposed for dealing with the problem of singularities in General Relativity. The proposal is, however, much more general than this. It can be used to deal with manifolds of any dimension which are endowed with nothing more…
Let $X$ be a smooth manifold belonging to one of these three collections: acyclic manifolds (compact or not, possibly with boundary), compact connected manifolds (possibly with boundary) with nonzero Euler characteristic, integral homology…
In this paper we construct a family of symplectic 4--manifolds with positive signature for any given fundamental group $G$ that approaches the BMY line. The family is used to show that one cannot hope to do better than than the BMY…
We prove that if two cusped hyperbolic $3$-manifolds admit a regular isomorphism between the profinite completions of their fundamental groups, then they share the same $A$-polynomial and their strongly detected boundary slopes match up.
We obtain restrictions on the topology of a closed connected manifold B that bounds a (possibly noncompact) manifold whose interior V admits a complete Riemannian metric of nonpositive sectional curvature. If G denotes the fundamental group…
A random group contains many subgroups which are isomorphic to the fundamental group of a compact hyperbolic 3-manifold with totally geodesic boundary. These subgroups can be taken to be quasi-isometrically embedded. This is true both in…
We show that all residually finite generalized Baumslag-Solitar groups of rank $n \geq 1$, defined on a finite and connected graph, are self-similar. Furthermore we prove that all residually finite fundamental groups of (finite, connected)…