Related papers: An Unexpected Rational Blowdown
We consider dimensional reductions of M-theory on $\mathbb{T}^{7}/\mathbb{Z}_{2}^{3}$ with the inclusion of arbitrary metric flux and spacetime filling KK monopoles. With these ingredients at hand, we are able to construct a novel family of…
We prove that every minimal symplectic filling of the link of a quotient surface singularity can be obtained from its minimal resolution by applying a sequence of rational blow-downs and symplectic antiflips. We present an explicit…
This article analyzes the interplay between symplectic geometry in dimension four and the invariants for smooth four-manifolds constructed using holomorphic triangles introduced in math.SG/0110169. Specifically, we establish a non-vanishing…
In [HT], two of us constructed a closed oriented 4-dimensional manifold with fundamental group $\Z$ that does not split off $S^1\times S^3$. In this note we show that this 4-manifold, and various others derived from it, do not admit smooth…
For each rational homology 3-sphere $Y$ which bounds simply connected definite 4-manifolds of both signs, we construct an infinite family of irreducible rational homology 3-spheres which are homology cobordant to $Y$ but cannot bound any…
A Stein covering of a complex manifold may be used to realise its analytic cohomology in accordance with the Cech theory. If, however, the Stein covering is parameterised by a smooth manifold rather than just a discrete set, then we…
Monotone polytopes, also known as smooth reflexive polytopes, are the polytopes associated to monotone symplectic toric manifolds and Gorenstein Fano toric varieties. We first show that the only monotone polytopes admitting blow-ups at…
We construct a new infinite family of 4-dimensional isolated symplectic singularities with trivial local fundamental group, answering a question of Beauville raised in 2000. Three constructions are presented for this family: (1) as…
A refined form of the `Folk Theorem' that a smooth action by a compact Lie group can be (canonically) resolved, by iterated blow up, to have unique isotropy type is proved in the context of manifolds with corners. This procedure is shown to…
This expository talk is an expanded version of a lecture at G.-M. Greuel's 60th Birthday Conference in Kaiserslautern in October, 2004. We survey recent work of Neumann-Wahl and others on the relation between topology and geometry of normal…
We extend and apply a recently developed approach to the study of dynamic bifurcations in PDEs based on the geometric blow-up method. We show that this approach, which has so far only been applied to study a dynamic Turing bifurcation in a…
We characterize when some small Seifert fibered spaces can be the convex boundaries of symplectic rational homology balls and give strong restrictions for others to bound such manifolds. In particular, we show that the only spherical…
Topological qubits based on $SU(N)$-symmetric valence-bond solid models are constructed. A logical topological qubit is the ground subspace with two-fold degeneracy, which is due to the spontaneous breaking of a global parity symmetry. A…
We obtain constraints on the topology of families of smooth $4$-manifolds arising from a finite dimensional approximation of the families Seiberg-Witten monopole map. Amongst other results these constraints include a families generalisation…
We consider the self-dual Chern-Simons-Schr\"odinger equation (CSS) under equivariance symmetry. Among others, (CSS) has a static solution $Q$ and pseudoconformal symmetry. We study the conditional stability of pseudoconformal blow-up…
Kollar and Ruan proved symplectic deformation invariance for uniruledness of Kaehler manifolds. Zhiyu Tian proved the same for rational connectedness in dimension < 4. Kollar conjectured this in all dimensions. We prove Kollar's conjecture,…
We investigate the black hole information paradox in the setting of pseudo-complex gravity, a covariant geometric extension of general relativity that introduces a minimal length scale by deforming the spacetime manifold. In this framework,…
It is one of the most important facts in 4-dimensional topology that not every spherical homology class of a 4-manifold can be represented by an embedded sphere. In 1978, M. Freedman and R. Kirby showed that in the simply connected case,…
The space of smooth rational cubic curves in projective space $\PP^r$ ($r\ge 3$) is a smooth quasi-projective variety, which gives us an open subset of the corresponding Hilbert scheme, the moduli space of stable maps, or the moduli space…
We construct simply connected, minimal, symplectic 4-manifolds with exotic smooth structures and each with one Seiberg-Witten basic class up to sign, on the Noether line and between the Noether and half Noether lines by star surgeries…