Related papers: Obstructions to Smooth Full-Holonomy Cayley Fibrat…
Following Ghomi and Tabachnikov we study topological obstructions to totally skew embeddings of a smooth manifold M in Euclidean spaces. This problem is naturally related to the question of estimating the geometric dimension of the stable…
Four-folds with trivial canonical bundles are divided into six classes according to their holonomy group. We consider examples that are fibred by abelian surfaces over the projective plane. We construct such fibrations in five of the six…
In this note we define fibrations of topological stacks and establish their main properties. We prove various standard results about fibrations (fiber homotopy exact sequence, Leray-Serre and Eilenberg-Moore spectral sequences, etc.). We…
In this paper we introduce the area of 2-ruled 4-folds in R^n (n=7 or 8), that is, submanifolds M of R^n that admit a fibration over some 2-fold Sigma such that each fibre is an affine 2-plane in R^n. This is motivated by the paper…
Let $W$ be a compact smooth $4$-manifold that deformation retract to a PL embedded closed surface. One can arrange the embedding to have at most one non-locally-flat point, and near the point the topology of the embedding is encoded in the…
Based on a general formula due to R.Bryant, we work out the topological structure of the space of torsion-free $G_2$-structures generating the same associated Riemannian metric on a compact $7$-manifold. We also identify a corresponding Lie…
We generalize a result of the author about the classification of 1-connected 7-manifolds and demonstrate its use by two concrete applications, one to 2-connected 7-manifolds (a new proof -- and slightly different formulation -- of an up to…
This article studies the geometry of moduli spaces of G2-manifolds, associative cycles, coassociative cycles and deformed Donaldson-Thomas bundles. We introduce natural symmetric cubic tensors and differential forms on these moduli spaces.…
We present a simple compact formula for a topologically nontrivial map $S^7 \to Spin(7)$ associated with the fiber bundle $Spin(7) \stackrel{G_2}{\to} S^7$. The homotopy group $\pi_7[Spin(7)] = \mathbb{Z}$ brings about the topologically…
We study spin structures on orbifolds. In particular, we show that if the singular set has codimension greater than 2, an orbifold is spin if and only if its smooth part is. On compact orbifolds, we show that any non-trivial twistor spinor…
We develop a spinorial description of CR structures of arbitrary codimension. More precisely, we characterize almost CR structures of arbitrary codimension on (Riemannian) manifolds by the existence of a Spin$^{c, r}$ structure carrying a…
We prove that, under a simple condition on the cohomology ring, every closed 4-manifold has mod 2 Seiberg-Witten simple type. This result shows that there exists a large class of topological 4-manifolds such that all smooth structures have…
We show that the combination of non-negative sectional curvature (or $2$-intermediate Ricci curvature) and strict positivity of scalar curvature forces rigidity of complete (non-compact) two-sided stable minimal hypersurfaces in a…
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…
The study of fibrations of the target manifolds of string/M/F-theories has provided many insights to the dualities among these theories or even as a tool to build up dualities since the work of Strominger, Yau, and Zaslow on the Calabi-Yau…
We construct the moduli space of Spin(7)-instantons on a hermitian complex vector bundle over a closed 8-dimensional manifold endowed with a (possibly non-integrable) Spin(7)-structure. We find suitable perturbations that achieve regularity…
Any Spin(7)-manifold admits a metric connection \nabla^c with totally skew-symmetric torsion T^c preserving the underlying structure. We classify those with \nabla^c-parallel T^c\neq0 and non-Abelian isotropy algebra iso(T^c)<spin(7). These…
This is a survey on known results and open problems about closed aspherical manifolds, i.e., connected closed manifolds whose universal coverings are contractible. Many examples come from certain kinds of non-positive curvature conditions.…
We prove vanishing results for the generalized Miller-Morita-Mumford classes of some smooth bundles whose fiber is a closed manifold that supports a nonpositively curved Riemannian metric. We also find, under some extra conditions, that the…
We construct smooth bundles with base and fiber products of two spheres whose total spaces have non-vanishing $\hat{A}$-genus. We then use these bundles to locate non-trivial rational homotopy groups of spaces of Riemannian metrics with…