Related papers: Exotic structures and adjunction inequality
Exotic spinors arise in non-simply connected base manifolds due to the nonequivalent spinor structure. The dynamics of exotic spinors are endowed with an additional differential factor. In this work, we merge the exotic spinor scenario with…
Dimension 4 is the first dimension in which exotic smooth manifold pairs appear -- manifolds which are topologically the same but for which there is no smooth deformation of one into the other. Whilst smooth and triangulated 4-manifolds do…
We prove new adjunction inequalities for embedded surfaces in four-manifolds with non-negative self-intersection number by using the Donaldson invariants. These formulas are completely analogous to the ones obtained by Ozsv\'ath and Szab\'o…
The present article investigates Sp(3) structures on 14-dimensional Riemannian manifolds, a continuation of the recent study of manifolds modeled on rank two symmetric spaces (here: SU(6)/Sp(3)). We derive topological criteria for the…
We investigate the local geometry of a pair of independent contact structures on 3-manifolds under maps that independently preserve each contact structure. We discover that such maps are homotheties on the contact 1-forms and we discover…
Finite-order invariants of knots in arbitrary 3-manifolds (including non-orientable ones) are constructed and studied by methods of the topology of discriminant sets. Obstructions to the integrability of admissible weight systems to…
We introduce topological contact dynamics of a smooth manifold carrying a cooriented contact structure, generalizing previous work in the case of a symplectic structure [MO07] or a contact form [BS12]. A topological contact isotopy is not…
We introduce and analyze the characteristic foliation induced by a contact structure on a branched surface, in particular a branched standard spine of a 3-manifold. We extend to (fairly general) singular foliations of branched surfaces the…
We construct closed, aspherical, smooth 4-manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic. These provide counterexamples to a smooth analog of the Borel conjecture in dimension four. Our technique is to apply the `reflection group…
Recent progress in string theory has led to a reformulation of quantum-group polynomial invariants for knots and links into new polynomial invariants whose coefficients can be understood in topological terms. We describe in detail how to…
We show that any closed oriented 3-manifold can be topologically embedded in some simply-connected closed symplectic 4-manifold, and that it can be made a smooth embedding after one stabilization. As a corollary of the proof we show that…
We use convex decomposition theory to (1) reprove the existence of a universally tight contact structure on every irreducible 3-manifold with nonempty boundary, and (2) prove that every toroidal 3-manifold carries infinitely many…
These notes are adapted from two talks given at the 2004 Clay Institute Summer School on Floer homology, gauge theory, and low dimensional topology at the Alfred Renyi Institute. We will quickly review what we do and do not know about the…
We survey what is known about various special types of submanifolds of contact manifolds and discuss their role in the development of contact geometry.
For an integer $n$, write $X_n(K)$ for the 4-manifold obtained by attaching a 2-handle to the 4-ball along the knot $K\subset S^3$ with framing $n$. It is known that if $n< \overline{\text{tb}}(K)$, then $X_n(K)$ admits the structure of a…
A unified summary is given of the existence theory of Stein manifolds in all dimensions, based on published and pending literature. Eliashberg's characterization of manifolds admitting Stein structures requires an extra delicate hypothesis…
It is known that there is a unique concordance class in the free homotopy class of $S^1\times pt \subset S^1 \times S^2$. The constructive proof of this fact is given by the second author. It turns out that all the concordances in this…
Using contact homology, we reobtain some recent results of Geiges and Gonzalo about the fundamental group of the space of contact structures on some 3-manifolds. We show that our techniques can be used to study higher dimensional contact…
This is a survey article about the connections between knot theory and four-dimensional topology. Every four-manifold can be represented in terms of a link, by a Kirby diagram. This point of view has led to progress in computing invariants…
The problem of possible astrophysical consequences of the existence of exotic differential structures on manifolds is discussed. It is argued that corrections to the curvature of the form of a source like terms should be expected in the…