Related papers: Closed manifold surgery obstructions and the Oozin…

Associated to any manifold equipped with a closed form of degree >1 is an `L-infinity algebra of observables' which acts as a higher/homotopy analog of the Poisson algebra of functions on a symplectic manifold. In order to study Lie group…

This article presents the constructions of new infinite families of smooth 4-manifolds with the property that any two manifolds in the same family are homeomorphic and, from their construction, seem to be quite different, but cannot be…

The problem of gauging a closed form is considered. When the target manifold is a simple Lie group G, it is seen that there is no obstruction to the gauging of a subgroup H\subset G if we may construct from the form a cocycle for the…

Let $M$ be a smooth, orientable, closed, connected $4$-manifold and suppose that $H_1(M;\mathbb{Z})$ is finitely generated and has no $2$-torsion. We give a homotopy decomposition of the suspension of $M$ in terms of spheres, Moore spaces…

Our objective is to illuminate the global structure of non-orientable manifolds with signature-changing metrics, with particular emphasis on global topological obstructions. Using explicit geometric constructions based on the topology of…

The goal of this paper is to set up an obstruction theory in the context of algebras over an operad and in the framework of differential graded modules over a field. Precisely, the problem we consider is the following: Suppose given two…

This paper provides two obstructions to small knot complements in $S^3$ admitting hidden symmetries. The first obstruction is being cyclically commensurable with another knot complement. This result provides a partial answer to a conjecture…

We use Heegaard Floer homology with twisted coefficients to define numerical invariants for arbitrary closed 3-manifolds equipped torsion spin$^c$ structures, generalising the correction terms (or $d$--invariants) defined by Ozsv\'ath and…

In this note, we prove an obstruction theorem for the existence of A infinite-structures over a commutative ring R on an algebra A associative up to homotopy, in terms of the Hochschild cohomology of the associative algebra H(A). The hidden…

We develop the details of a surgery theory for contact manifolds of arbitrary dimension via convex structures, extending the 3-dimensional theory developed by Giroux. The theory is analogous to that of Weinstein manifolds in symplectic…

We prove that if the $m$-th homotopy group for $m \geq 2$ of a closed manifold has non-trivial invariants or coinvariants under the action of the fundamental group, then there exist infinitely many geometrically distinct closed geodesics…

Two 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic if they become diffeomorphic after connected sum with S^2 x S^2's. This paper shows that two closed, orientable, homotopy equivalent, smooth 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic, provided a certain…

Let $X$ be a normal noetherian scheme and $Z \subseteq X$ a closed subset of codimension $\geq 2$. We consider here the local obstructions to the map $\hat{\pi}_{1}(X\backslash Z) \to \hat{\pi}_{1}(X)$ being an isomorphism. Assuming $X$ has…

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…

The cosmetic surgery conjecture is a longstanding conjecture in 3-manifold theory. We present a theorem about exceptional cosmetic surgery for homology spheres. Along the way we prove that if the surgery is not a small seifert…

We construct examples of nonresolvable generalized $n$-manifolds, $n\geq 6$, with arbitrary resolution obstruction, homotopy equivalent to any simply connected, closed $n$-manifold. We further investigate the structure of generalized…

In an earlier paper (math.SG/0110169), we introduced absolute gradings on the three-manifold invariants developed in math.SG/0101206 and math.SG/0105202. Coupled with the surgery long exact sequences, we obtain a number of three- and…

The Borel Conjecture predicts that closed aspherical manifolds are topological rigid. We want to investigate when a non-aspherical oriented connected closed manifold M is topological rigid in the following sense. If f: N --> M is an…

We present an argument due to Thom to formulate a priori cohomology obstructions for a projective variety to admit an embedded resolution of singularities, and generalize the argument to a field of characteristic $p > 0$. We show that these…

Motivated by physics, we propose two conjectures regarding the cohomology ring of the crepant resolutions of orbifolds and cohomological invariants of K-equivalent manifolds.