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We describe an algorithm which has enabled us to give a complete list, without repetitions, of all closed oriented irreducible 3-manifolds of complexity up to 9. More interestingly, we have actually been able to give a "name" to each such…

An oriented compact closed manifold is called inflexible if the set of mapping degrees ranging over all continuous self-maps is finite. Inflexible manifolds have become of importance in the theory of functorial semi-norms on homology.…

The goal of this book is to characterize algebraically the closed 4-manifolds that fibre nontrivially or admit geometries in the sense of Thurston, or which are obtained by surgery on 2-knots, and to provide a reference for the topology of…

In this thesis we elaborate on the three subjects of the title. We first show that supertubes exist and still preserve some supersymmetry in a large variety of curved backgrounds. Within the AdS/CFT correspondence we study the supersymmetry…

We prove that for any closed manifold of dimension 3 or greater that there is an open set of smooth flows that have a hyperbolic set that is not contained in a locally maximal one. Additionally, we show that the stabilization of the…

Given a closed $n$-manifold, we consider the set of simple homotopy types of $n$-manifolds within its homotopy type, called its simple homotopy manifold set. We characterise it in terms of algebraic K-theory, the surgery obstruction map,…

For contact manifolds in dimension three, the notions of weak and strong symplectic fillability and tightness are all known to be inequivalent. We extend these facts to higher dimensions: in particular, we define a natural generalization of…

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…

This paper shows that the Seifert volume of each closed non-trivial graph manifold is virtually positive. As a consequence, for each closed orientable prime 3-manifold $N$, the set of mapping degrees $\c{D}(M,N)$ is finite for any…

We show that closed aspherical manifolds supporting an affine structure, whose holonomy map is injective and contains a pure translation, must have vanishing simplicial volume. This provides some further evidence for the veracity of the…

Four-manifold theory is employed to study the existence of (twisted) generalized complex structures. It is shown that there exist (twisted) generalized complex structures that have more than one type change loci. In an example-driven…

In this paper, by employing the Gauss-Bonnet theorem for Riemannian simplices due to Allendoerfer and Weil, we show that if a closed nonpositively curved $4$-manifold has nonzero Euler characteristic, then its simplicial volume is…

Geometric Langlands duality can be understood from statements of mirror symmetry that can be formulated in purely topological terms for an oriented two-manifold $C$. But understanding these statements is extremely difficult without picking…

The boundary of every relatively compact Stein domain in a complex manifold of dimension at least two is connected. No assumptions on the boundary regularity are necessary. The same proofs hold also for $q$-complete domains, and in the…

Let X be a connected family of complex Fano manifolds. We show that if some fiber is the product of two manifolds of lower dimensions, then so is every fiber. Combining with previous work of Hwang and Mok, this implies immediately that if a…

Let F be a foliation of codimension 2 on a compact manifold with at least one non-compact leaf. We show that then F must contain uncountably many non-compact leaves. We prove the same statement for oriented p-dimensional foliations of…

Integral simplicial volume is a homotopy invariant of oriented closed connected manifolds, defined as the minimal weighted number of singular simplices needed to represent the fundamental class with integral coefficients. We show that…

This note is a follow-up to our previous work arXiv:2505.14496. For any (4n+2)-dimensional closed symplectic manifold, we find that the dimension of the even-degree part of its 1-filtered cohomology is even, similar to the vanishing…

We show that there exist infinitely many pairwise distinct non-closed G_2-manifolds (some of which have holonomy full G_2) such that they admit co-oriented contact structures and have co-oriented contact submanifolds which are also…

This thesis presents a thorough analysis of the links between the N=4 supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions and its three topological twisted counterparts. Special emphasis is put in deriving explicit results in terms of the vacuum…