Related papers: Closed manifold surgery obstructions and the Oozin…

Consider a smooth $4$-manifold $X$ and a diffeomorphism $f : X \to X$. We give an obstruction in the form of an adjunction inequality for an embedded surface in $X$ to be isotopic to its image under $f$. It follows that the minimal genus of…

We study cobordisms of a class of topological operads called ``manifold operads''. These operads are generalizations of the Fulton-MacPherson operad: an operad built from configurations of points in Euclidean space. Cobordism of manifold…

Manifolds all of whose geodesics are closed have been studied a lot, but there are only few examples known. The situation is different if one allows in addition for orbifold singularities. We show, nevertheless, that the abundance of new…

We study the deformation theory of nearly $\mathrm{G}_2$ manifolds. These are seven dimensional manifolds admitting real Killing spinors. We show that the infinitesimal deformations of nearly $\mathrm{G}_2$ structures are obstructed in…

We undertake a systematic investigation of compact aspherical manifolds with boundary; motivated by the plethora of examples in the bounded case and by the beauty of the theory in the closed case. Our main theorems give a homological…

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 extract a nonnegative integer-valued invariant, which we call the "order of algebraic torsion", from the Symplectic Field Theory of a closed contact manifold, and show that its finiteness gives obstructions to the existence of symplectic…

In this paper we explore new relations between Algebraic Topology and the theory of Hopf Algebras. For an arbitrary topological space $X$, the loop space homology $H_*(\Omega\Sigma X; \coefZ)$ is a Hopf algebra. We introduce a new homotopy…

This article is devoted to examples of (orbifold) K\"ahler groups from the perspective of the so-called Shafarevich conjecture on holomorphic convexity. It aims at pointing out that every quasi-projective complex manifold with an…

This note gives a uniform, self-contained, and fairly direct approach to a variety of obstruction-theoretic problems on 8-manifolds. We give necessary and sufficient cohomological critera for the existence of almost complex and almost…

We prove that the recently shown cohomological obstruction for quasiregular ellipticity has a generalization in the theory of quasiregular values. More specifically, if $M$ is a closed, connected, and oriented Riemannian $n$-manifold, and…

We give a survey of geometric approaches to the topological 4-dimensional surgery and 5-dimensional s-cobordism conjectures, with a focus on the study of surfaces in 4-manifolds. The geometric lemma underlying these conjectures is a…

Surgery obstruction of a normal map to a simple Poincare pair $(X,Y)$ lies in the relative surgery obstruction group $L_*(\pi_1(Y)\to\pi_1(X))$. A well known result of Wall, the so called $\pi$-$\pi$ theorem, states that in higher…

Small codimensional embedded manifolds defined by equations of small degree are Fano and covered by lines. They are complete intersections exactly when the variety of lines through a general point is so and has the right codimension. This…

For each nonnegative integer m we show that any closed, oriented topological four-manifold with fundamental group Z_{4m+2} and odd intersection form, with possibly seven exceptions, either admits no smooth structure or admits infinitely…

We study the topological obstructions of dynamical convexity on contact manifolds focusing on fillability by cotangent bundles and subcritical surgeries. Using links to algebraic geometry, we motivate and define a stronger version of…

The problem of equivariant rigidity is the $\Gamma$-homeomorphism classification of $\Gamma$-actions on manifolds with compact quotient and with contractible fixed sets for all finite subgroups of $\Gamma$. In other words, this is the…

This paper studies the homotopy and homeomorphism classifications of $4$-manifolds with boundary. Given $4$-manifolds $X_0$ and $X_1$ with fundamental group $\pi$, we consider the problem of extending a homotopy equivalence $h \colon…

We use rewriting systems to spell out cup-products in the (twisted) cohomology groups of a product of surface groups. This allows us to detect a non-trivial obstruction bounding from below the effective topological complexity of an…

We define obstructions which obstruct topological pseudo-isotopies from being isotopic to isotopies in dimension four. These match the smooth obstructions of Hatcher-Wagoner for smooth pseudo-isotopies, and accordingly are valued in certain…