Related papers: Rational Blowdowns of Smooth 4-Manifolds

We verify that the rational blow-down schemes along certain Seifert fibered 3-manifolds found by the second author, Szabo and Wahl are, in fact, symplectic operations.

Motivated by a result of L.P. Roberts on rational blow-downs in Heegaard-Floer homology, we study such operations along 3-manifolds that arise as branched double covers of $S^{3}$ along several non-alternating, slice knots.

We show that every negative definite configuration of symplectic surfaces in a symplectic 4--manifold has a strongly symplectically convex neighborhood. We use this to show that, if a negative definite configuration satisfies an additional…

We show that there is a complex structure on the symplectic 4-manifold $W_{4, k}$ obtained from the elliptic surface E(4) by rationally blowing down $k$ sections for $2\le k\le 9$. And we interpret it via ${\mathbb Q}$-Gorenstein smoothing.…

Under certain homological hypotheses on a compact 4-manifold, we prove exactness of the topological surgery sequence at the stably smoothable normal invariants. The main examples are the class of finite connected sums of 4-manifolds with…

In this paper we introduce a technique, called rim surgery, which can change a smooth embedding of an orientable surface of positive genus and nonnegative self-intersection in a smooth 4-manifold while leaving the topological embedding…

We generalize the analysis by Moore and Witten in [arXiv:hep-th/9709193], and consider integration over the u-plane in Donaldson theory with surface operators on a smooth four-manifold X. Several novel aspects will be developed in the…

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…

In this article we construct a new family of simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds with $b_2^+ =1$ and $c_1^2 =2$ which are not diffeomorphic to rational surfaces by using rational blow-down technique. As a corollary, we conclude that a…

Let $X$ be a connected compact 3-manifold with non-empty boundary. Consider the boundary $M$ of $X\times D^2$. $M$ is a 4-dimensional closed manifold and has the same fundamental group as $X$. Various examples of $X$ are known for which a…

In this paper, one considers the change of orbifold Gromov-Witten invariants under weighted blow-up at smooth points. Some blow-up formula for Gromov-Witten invariants of symplectic orbifolds is proved. These results extend the results of…

Using the degeneration technique, one studies the behavior of Welschinger invariants under the blow-up, and obtains some blow-up formulae of Welschinger invariants. One also analyses the variation of Welschinger invariants when replacing a…

We introduce a new operation, double point surgery, on immersed surfaces in a 4-manifold, and use it to construct knotted configurations of surfaces in many 4-manifolds. Taking branched covers, we produce smoothly exotic actions of Z/m x…

In the paper \cite{wall_1}, C.T.C. Wall proved that two smooth closed simply connected 4-manifolds which are homeomorphic are in fact stably diffeomorphic. We prove a similar result which states that two smooth closed 4-manifolds satisfying…

We show that all large enough positive integral surgeries on algebraic knots bound a 4-manifold with a negative definite plumbing tree, which we describe explicitly. Then we apply the lattice embedding obstruction coming from Donaldson's…

By using the gluing formula of the Seiberg-Witten invariant, we compute the Yamabe invariant Y(X) of 4-manifolds X obtained by performing surgeries along points, circles or tori on compact Kaehler surfaces. For instance, if M is a compact…

The rational homology balls $B_n$ appeared in Fintushel and Stern's rational blow-down construction [FS] and were subsequently used (e.g. Fintushel-Stern[FS4], Park[Pa2]) to construct exotic smooth manifolds with small Euler numbers. We…

A proof via the Seiberg-Witten moduli space of Donaldson's theorem on smooth 4-manifolds with definite intersection forms.

We prove a gluing formula for Seiberg--Witten invariants which describes in particular the behaviour of the invariant under blow-up and rational blow-down.

We study the Donaldson invariants of simply connected $4$-manifolds with $b_+=1$, and in particular the change of the invariants under wall-crossing. We assume the conjecture of Kotschick and Morgan about the shape of the wall-crossing…