Related papers: Simple spheres in simply-connected $4$-manifolds

In this note we study whether specific elements in the second homology of specific simply connected closed $4$-manifolds can be represented by smooth or topologically flat embedded spheres.

These notes are adapted from two talks given at the 2004 Clay Institute Summer School on Floer homology, gauge theory, and low dimensional topology at the Alfred Renyi Institute. We will quickly review what we do and do not know about the…

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…

M. Freedman showed that every homology 3-sphere embeds as a locally flat submanifold of $S^4$. This is in striking contrast to the state of our knowledge of smooth embeddings of homology spheres. This book surveys what is presently known…

We describe a procedure to construct infinite sets of pairwise smoothly inequivalent 2-spheres in simply connected 4-manifolds, which are topologically isotopic and whose complement has a prescribed fundamental group that satisfies some…

The fundamental group of the complement of a locally flat surface in a $4$-manifold is called the knot group of the surface. In this article we prove that two locally flat $2$-spheres in $\mathbb{C} P^2$ with knot group $\mathbb{Z}_2$ are…

We classify the possible elementary amenable fundamental groups of compact aspherical 4-manifolds with boundary and conclude that they are either polycyclic or solvable Baumslag- Solitar. Since these groups are good and satisfy the…

We compute the topological mapping class group of every compact, simply connected, topological 4-manifold. This was previously only known in the closed case. If the 4-manifold is smooth, we deduce an analogous description of the stable…

We describe up to finite coverings causal flat affine complete Lorentzian manifolds such that the past and the future of any point are closed near this point. We say that these manifolds are strictly causal. In particular, we prove that…

Despite spectacular advances in defining invariants for simply connected smooth and symplectic 4-dimensional manifolds and the discovery of effective surgical techniques, we still have been unable to classify simply connected smooth…

In this paper we describe the classification of all the geometric fibrations of a closed flat Riemannian 4-manifold over a 1-orbifold.

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 have been interested in understanding the class of 7-dimensional closed and simply-connected manifolds in geometric and constructive ways. We have constructed explicit fold maps, which are higher dimensional versions of Morse functions,…

We prove the long-standing Montesinos conjecture that any closed oriented PL 4-manifold M is a simple covering of S^4 branched over a locally flat surface (cf [J M Montesinos, 4-manifolds, 3-fold covering spaces and ribbons, Trans. Amer.…

We classify compact oriented $5$-manifolds with free fundamental group and $\pi_{2}$ a torsion free abelian group in terms of the second homotopy group considered as $\pi_1$-module, the cup product on the second cohomology of the universal…

We show that the number of double points of smoothly immersed 2-spheres representing certain homology classes of an oriented, smooth, closed, simply-connected 4-manifold X must increase with the complexity of corresponding h-cobordisms from…

This is a summary of some of the basic facts about flat 2-orbifold groups, otherwise known as 2-dimensional crystallographic groups. We relate the geometric and topological presentations of these groups, and consider structures…

A general method for the construction of smooth flat connections on 3-manifolds is introduced. The procedure is strictly connected with the deduction of the fundamental group of a manifold M by means of a Heegaard splitting presentation of…

A locally flatly embedded $2$-sphere in a compact $4$-manifold $X$ is called a spine if the inclusion map is a homotopy equivalence. A spine is called simple if the complement of the $2$-sphere has abelian fundamental group. We prove that…

We classify topological $4$-manifolds with boundary and fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}$, under some assumptions on the boundary. We apply this to classify surfaces in simply-connected $4$-manifolds with $S^3$ boundary, where the fundamental…