Related papers: All two dimensional links are null homotopic

I prove that any two smooth collections of spanning 3-discs for the trivial 2-link in $S^4$ become smoothly isotopic rel. boundary after pushing them into $D^5$.

In this paper, we construct infinitely many non-isotopic 3-knots in the 5-sphere, each of which has four critical points with respect to the standard height function of the 5-sphere. This contrasts with a theorem of Scharlemann which says…

This is the last of a series of papers which give a necessary and sufficient condition for two essential simple loops on a 2-bridge sphere in a 2-bridge link complement to be homotopic in the link complement. The first paper of the series…

The unknot U in S^4 has non-unique smooth spanning 3-balls up to isotopy fixing U. Equivalently there are properly embedded non-separating 3-balls in S^1xB^3 not properly isotopic to 1xB^3. More generally there exist non-separating…

Given a closed, smooth, connected, orientable $4$-manifold $M$, whose integral homology groups can have $2$-torsion, we determine the homotopy decomposition of the double suspension $\Sigma^2M$ as wedge sums of some elementary…

For smooth embeddings of an integral homology 3-sphere in the 6-sphere, we define an integer invariant in terms of their Seifert surfaces. Our invariant gives a bijection between the set of smooth isotopy classes of such embeddings and the…

We use topological surgery in dimension four to give sufficient conditions for the zero framed surgery manifold of a 3-component link to be homology cobordant to the 3-torus, which arises from zero framed surgery on the Borromean rings, via…

The following problem was proposed in 2010 by S. Lando. Let $M$ and $N$ be two unions of the same number of disjoint circles in a sphere. Do there always exist two spheres in 3-space such that their intersection is transversal and is a…

We classify four-dimensional manifolds endowed with symplectic pairs admitting embedded symplectic spheres with non-negative self-intersection, following the strategy of McDuff's classification of rational and ruled symplectic four…

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…

We consider a self-homeomorphism h of some surface S. A subset F of the fixed point set of h is said to be unlinked if there is an isotopy from the identity to h that fixes every point of F. With Le Calvez' transverse foliations theory in…

In this paper is presented a new approach to the axiomatic homotopy theory in categories, which offers a simpler and more useful answer to this old question: how two objects in a category (without any topological feature) can be deformed…

We show that there are homotopy equivalences $h:N\to M$ between closed manifolds which are induced by cell-like maps $p:N\to X$ and $q:M\to X$ but which are not homotopic to homeomorphisms. The phenomenon is based on construction of…

A standard fact about two incompressible surfaces in an irreducible 3-manifold is that one can move one of them by isotopy so that their intersection becomes $\pi_1$-injective. By extending it on the maps of some 3-dimensional…

Let \Delta be a (d-1)-dimensional homology sphere on n vertices with m minimal non-faces. We consider the invariant \alpha := m - (n-d) and prove that for a given value of \alpha, there are only finitely many homology spheres that cannot be…

We prove that any diffeomorphism of the sphere S^n to itself can be decomposed into bi-Lipschitz mappings of small isometric distortion and which move points a small amount in the spherical metric.

We study the space of link maps, which are smooth maps from the disjoint union of manifolds P and Q to a manifold N such that the images of P and Q are disjoint. We give a range of dimensions, interpreted as the connectivity of a certain…

We show that the homotopy category of unpointed spaces admits no set of objects jointly reflecting isomorphisms by giving an explicit counterexample involving large symmetric groups. We also show that, in contrast, the spheres jointly…

A well-known theorem of Whitney states that a 3-connected planar graph admits an essentially unique embedding into the 2-sphere. We prove a 3-dimensional analogue: a simply-connected $2$-complex every link graph of which is 3-connected…

In this paper, we study contact structures supported by open book decompositions whose pages are four-punctured spheres. The paper is split into two parts. In the first part, we find infinitely many overtwisted, right-veering monodromies on…