Related papers: Cobordism, spin structures, and profinite completi…
Let M be an 8-manifold with a Spin(7)-structure. We first show that closed Cayley submanifolds of M form a smooth moduli space for a generic Spin(7)-structure. Then we study the deformations of a compact, connected Cayley submanifold X of M…
A closed manifold $M$ of dimension at least $5$ has only finitely many smooth structures. Moreover, smooth structures of $M$ are in bijection with smooth structures of $M\times\mathbb{R}$. Both of these statements are false equivariantly.…
We show that two properly embedded compact surfaces in an orientable 4-manifold are cobordant if and only if they are $\mathbb{Z}/2$-homologous and either the 4-manifold has boundary or the surfaces have the same normal Euler number. If the…
We study spin structures on compact simply-connected homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian manifolds (M = G/H, g) of a compact semisimple Lie group G. We classify flag manifolds F = G/H of a compact simple Lie group which are spin. This yields also…
Under some suitable assumptions Riemannian manifolds $(M, g, H)$ that admit a connection $\hat\nabla$ with torsion a 3-form $H$, which is both closed $d H=0$ and $\hat\nabla$-covariantly constant, are locally isometric to a product $N\times…
By using cobordism theoretic arguments similar to those in the literature on positive scalar curvature metrics we prove the existence of contact structures on 5-dimensional spin manifolds whose fundamental group is a group of odd order (not…
We study compact, simply connected, homogeneous 8-manifolds admitting invariant Spin(7)-structures, classifying all canonical presentations G/H of such spaces, with G simply connected. For each presentation, we exhibit explicit examples of…
We study the classification of closed, smooth, spin, $1$-connected $7$-manifolds whose integral cohomology ring is isomorphic to $H^*(\mathbb{C}P^2\times S^3)$. We also prove that if the integral cohomology ring of a closed, smooth, spin,…
It is not known whether the realisation part of the $s$-cobordism theorem holds for smooth 4-manifolds, nor whether every pair of smoothly $h$-cobordant 4-manifolds is also smoothly $s$-cobordant. We provide some new conditions under which…
We study compact complex manifolds $M$ admitting a conformal holomorphic Riemannian structure invariant under the action of a complex semi-simple Lie group $G$. We prove that if the group $G$ acts transitively and essentially, then $M$ is…
We describe off-shell $\mathcal{N}=1$ M-theory compactifications down to four dimensions in terms of eight-dimensional manifolds equipped with a topological $Spin(7)$-structure. Motivated by the exceptionally generalized geometry…
Let $\mathscr{A}$ be a connected cochain DG algebra such that $H(\mathscr{A})$ is a Noetherian graded algebra. We give some criteria for $\mathscr{A}$ to be homologically smooth in terms of the singularity category, the cone length of the…
We show that any closed biquotient with finite fundamental group admits metrics of positive Ricci curvature. Also, let M be a closed manifold on which a compact Lie group G acts with cohomogeneity one, and let L be a closed subgroup of G…
We show the following result: Let $(M,g_0)$ be a compact manifold of dimension $n\geq 12$ with positive isotropic curvature. Then $M$ is diffeomorphic to a spherical space form, or a quotient manifold of $\mathbb{S}^{n-1}\times \mathbb{R}$…
Let $\widehat{\mathcal{C}}_{\mathbb{Z}}$ denote the group of knots in homology spheres that bound homology balls, modulo smooth concordance in homology cobordisms. Answering a question of Matsumoto, the second author previously showed that…
In this paper we continue the study of positive scalar curvature (psc) metrics on a depth-1 Thom-Mather stratified space $M_\Sigma$ with singular stratum $\beta M$ (a closed manifold of positive codimension) and associated link equal to…
We show that if $M$ and $N$ have the same homotopy type of simply connected closed smooth $m$-manifolds such that the integral and mod-$2$ cohomologies of $M$ vanish in odd degrees, then their homotopy inertia groups are equal. Let $M^{2n}$…
In this article, we answer two questions of Buchanan-McKean (arXiv:2312.08209) about bordism for manifolds with spin$^h$ structures: we establish a Smith isomorphism between the reduced spin$^h$ bordism of $\mathbb{RP}^\infty$ and…
Let $G$ be a compact Lie group acting effectively by isometries on a compact Riemannian manifold $M$ with nonempty fixed point set $Fix(M,G)$. We say that the action is \emph{fixed point homogeneous} if $G$ acts transitively on a normal…
In this paper we will show that two surfaces of the same genus and homology class in a simply connected 4-manifold are concordant. We will show they are often topologically isotopic when their complements have cyclic fundamental group.…