Related papers: On nonorientable $4$--manifolds

In this note we prove that, for any integer n, there exist a smooth 4-manifold, homotopic to a K3 surface, defined by applying the link surgery method of Fintushel-Stern to a certain 2-component graph link, which admits n inequivalent…

In this paper we obtain the following results: (1) Any compact Stein surface with boundary embeds naturally into a symplectic Lefschetz fibration over the 2-sphere. (2) There exists a minimal elliptic fibration over the 2-disk, which is not…

We introduce blow-up and blow-down operations for generalized complex 4-manifolds. Combining these with a surgery analogous to the logarithmic transform, we then construct generalized complex structures on nCP2 # m \bar{CP2} for n odd, a…

Suppose that $W$ and $W'$ are smooth, compact, and oriented $4$-manifolds that are either diffeomorphic to $S^1$ times the exterior $E_Y(K)$ of a fibered knot $K$ in a closed, connected, orientable $3$-manifold $Y$, or are diffeomorphic to…

We prove that every smoothly embedded surface in a 4--manifold can be isotoped to be in bridge position with respect to a given trisection of the ambient 4--manifold; that is, after isotopy, the surface meets components of the trisection in…

We show that under appropriate hypotheses, a plumbing of symplectic surfaces in a symplectic 4-manifold admits strongly convex neighborhoods. Moreover the neighborhoods are Lefschetz fibered with an easily-described open book on the…

We consider product 4--manifolds S^1 X M, where M is a closed, connected and oriented 3-manifold. We prove that if S^1 X M admits a complex structure or a Lefschetz or Seifert fibration, then the following statement is true: S^1 X M admits…

We study smooth proper embeddings of compact orientable surfaces in compact orientable $4$-manifolds and elements in the mapping class group of that surface which are induced by diffeomorphisms of the ambient $4$-manifolds. We call such…

In analogy with the vector bundle theory we define universal and strongly universal Lefschetz fibrations over bounded surfaces. After giving a characterization of these fibrations we construct very special strongly universal Lefschetz…

A smooth closed 3-manifold $M$ fibered by tori $T^2$ is characterized by an element $\phi \in GL(2,\mathbb{Z})$. We show that $M$ is the boundary of a 4-manifold fibered by tori over a surface such that the bundle structure on $M$ is the…

Heegaard splittings stratify 3-manifolds by complexity; only $S^3$ admits a genus-zero splitting, and only $S^3$, $S^1 \times S^2$, and lens spaces $L(p,q)$ admit genus-one splittings. In dimension four, the second author and Jeffrey Meier…

We show that any ruled surface $X$ with $\chi(X) < 0$ admits infinitely many inequivalent Lefschetz pencils of fixed genus and number of base points. Our proof proceeds by building infinitely many inequivalent Lefschetz fibrations on a…

We classify tight contact structures with zero Giroux torsion on some Seifert-fibered manifolds with four exceptional fibers. We get the lower bound by constructing contact structures using Legendrian surgery. We use convex surface theory…

We show that only finitely many links in a closed 3-manifold share the same complement, up to twists along discs and annuli. Using the same techniques, we prove that by adding 2-handles on the same link we get only finitely many smooth…

We introduce a new type of singularity for smooth maps from $4$-manifolds to surfaces, called an $M$-singularity, whose critical locus is a circle contained in a single fiber. We show that the monodromy around an $M$-singularity is a…

We show that, given $d \geq 4$ and two closed connected oriented PL $4$-manifolds $M$ and $N$ such that $N$ has a handle decomposition with no $1$- and $3$-handles, there exists a $d$-fold simple branched covering $p \colon M \darrow{d} N$…

Let M be a smooth 4-manifold which admits a genus g Lefschetz fibration over D^2 or S^2. We develop a technique to compute the signature of M using the global monodromy of this fibration.

Fintushel and Stern have proved that if S \subset X is a symplectic surface in a symplectic 4-manifold such that S has simply-connected complement and nonnegative self-intersection, then there are infinitely many topologically equivalent…

In a pair of papers, we construct invariants for smooth four-manifolds equipped with `broken fibrations' - the singular Lefschetz fibrations of Auroux, Donaldson and Katzarkov - generalising the Donaldson-Smith invariants for Lefschetz…

Every closed oriented PL 4-manifold is a branched cover of the 4-sphere branched over a PL-surface with finitely many singularities by Piergallini [Topology 34(3):497-508, 1995]. This generalizes a long standing result by Hilden and…