Related papers: On Ribbon $R^4$'s

We produce a rational homology 3-sphere that does not smoothly bound either a positive or negative definite 4-manifold. Such a 3-manifold necessarily cannot be rational homology cobordant to a Seifert fibered space or any 3-manifold…

Every null-homologous link in an oriented 3-manifold is isotopic to the boundary of a ribbon of a Legendrian graph for any overtwisted contact structure. However this is not the case if the boundary is required to be non-loose. Here, we…

We obtain topological obstructions to the existence of a complete Riemannian metric with uniformly positive scalar curvature on certain (non-compact) $4$-manifolds. In particular, such a metric on the interior of a compact contractible…

We prove that closed connected contact manifolds of dimension $\geq 5$ related by an h-cobordism with a flexible Weinstein structure become contactomorphic after some kind of stabilization. We also provide examples of non-conjugate contact…

We illustrate the rich landscape of 4-manifold topology through the lens of counterexamples. We consider several of the most commonly studied equivalence relations on 4-manifolds and how they are related to one another. We explain…

We show that no exotic $\mathbb{R}^4$ admits a complete Riemannian metric with uniformly positive isotropic curvature and with bounded geometry. This is essentially a corollary of the main result in [Hu1], and was stated in [Hu2] without…

In this note we present a characterization of those open n-manifolds (n>4), whose products with the real line are homeomorphic to interiors of compact (n+1)-manifolds with boundary.

We introduce a new stable range invariant for the classification of closed, oriented topological $4$-manifolds (up to $s$-cobordism), after stabilization by connected sum with a uniformly bounded number of copies of $S^2\times S^2$.

The purpose of this note is to show that classical cobordism arguments, which go back to the pioneering works of Mandelbaum and Moishezon, provide quick and unified proofs of any knot surgered compact simply-connected 4-manifold X_K…

We show how to construct absolutely exotic smooth structures on compact 4-manifolds with boundary, including contractible manifolds. In particular, we prove that any compact smooth 4-manifold W with boundary that admits a relatively exotic…

We discuss the cobordism type of spin manifolds with nonnegative sectional curvature. We show that in each dimension $4k \geq 12$, there are infinitely many cobordism types of simply connected and nonnegatively curved spin manifolds.…

This paper is the second part of our work on 4-dimensional 2-handlebodies. In the first part (arXiv:math.GT/0407032) it is shown that up to certain set of local moves, connected simple coverings of B^4 branched over ribbon surfaces,…

We prove recognition theorems for codimension one manifold factors of dimension $n \geq 4$. In particular, we formalize topographical methods and introduce three ribbons properties: the crinkled ribbons property, the twisted crinkled…

Given a link L in the 3-sphere, we ask whether the components of L bound disjoint, nullhomologous disks properly embedded in a simply-connected positive-definite smooth 4-manifold; the knot case has been studied extensively in work of…

Alternative proof is given for an earlier presented result that if a link in 3-space bounds a compact oriented proper surface (without closed component) in the upper half 4-space, then the link bounds a ribbon surface in the upper half…

Consider a dihedral cover $f: Y\to X$ with $X$ and $Y$ four-manifolds and $f$ branched along an oriented surface embedded in $X$ with isolated cone singularities. We prove that only a slice knot can arise as the unique singularity on an…

One approach to produce a pair of homeomorphic-but-not-diffeomophic closed 4-manifolds is to find a knot which is smoothly slice in one but not the other. This approach has never been run successfully. We give the first examples of a pair…

In this paper, we present the idea that the formalism of string theory is connected with the dimension 4 in a new way, not covered by phenomenological or model-building approaches. The main connection is given by structures induced by small…

In a recent article, the authors constructed a six-parameter family of highly connected 7-manifolds which admit an SO(3)-invariant metric of non-negative sectional curvature. Each member of this family is the total space of a Seifert…

We prove that any two smooth h-cobordant simply-connected 4-manifolds can be obtained by taking two manifolds with boundary, one of which is contractible, and gluing them along the boundary via two different attaching maps.