Related papers: Noncomplex smooth 4-manifolds with Lefschetz fibra…
In this paper we construct six-dimensional compact non-K\"ahler Hamiltonian circle manifolds which satisfy the strong Lefschetz property themselves but nevertheless have a non-Lefschetz symplectic quotient. This provides the first known…
We use symplectic cohomology to study the non-uniqueness of symplectic structures on the smooth manifolds underlying affine varieties. Starting with a Lefschetz fibration on such a variety and a finite set of primes, the main new tool is a…
In this article, we present new symplectic 4-manifolds with same integral cohomology as $S^{2}\times S^{2}$. The generalization of this construction is given as well, an infinite family of symplectic 4-manifolds cohomology equivalent to…
A compact oriented 4-manifold is defined to be of ``superconformal simple type'' if certain polynomials in the basic classes (constructed using the Seiberg-Witten invariants) vanish identically. We show that all known 4-manifolds of…
In this paper we study smooth structures on closed oriented 4-manifolds with fundamental group Z_2 and definite intersection form. We construct infinitely many irreducible, smooth, oriented, closed, definite four-manifolds with fundamental…
We prove that for every natural number k there are simply connected topological four-manifolds which have at leat k distinct smooth structures supporting Einstein metrics, and also have infinitely many distinct smooth structures not…
For each $g>0$ we give infinitely many knots that are strongly negative amphichiral, hence rationally slice and representing 2-torsion in the smooth concordance group, yet which do not bound any locally flatly embedded surface in the 4-ball…
We show that there are contact 3-manifolds of support genus one which admit infinitely many Stein fillings, but do not admit arbitrarily large ones. These Stein fillings arise from genus-1 allowable Lefschetz fibrations with distinct…
We construct infinitely many pairwise non-diffeomorphic smooth structures on a definite $4$-manifold with non-cyclic fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}/2\times \mathbb{Z}/2$.
In this paper, we investigate existence of inequivalent smooth structures on closed smooth non-orientable 4-manifolds building upon results of Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson, Fintushel-Stern, Gompf, and Stolz. We add to the number of known…
We show that any ruled surface $X$ with $\chi(X) < 0$ admits infinitely many inequivalent Lefschetz pencils of fixed genus and number of base points. Our proof proceeds by building infinitely many inequivalent Lefschetz fibrations on a…
Which smooth compact 4-manifolds admit an Einstein metric with non-negative Einstein constant? A complete answer is provided in the special case of 4-manifolds that also happen to admit either a complex structure or a symplectic structure.
We construct a relation among right-handed Dehn twists in the mapping class group of a compact oriented surface of genus g with 4g+4 boundary components. This relation gives an explicit topological description of 4g+4 disjoint (-1)-sections…
We prove that symplectic 4-manifolds with $b_1 = 0$ and $b^+ > 1$ have nonvanishing Donaldson invariants, and that the canonical class is always a basic class. We also characterize in many situations the basic classes of a Lefschetz…
We study which lens spaces can bound smooth 4-manifolds with second Betti number one under various topological conditions. Specifically, we show that there are infinite families of lens spaces that bound compact, simply-connected, smooth…
In the second of a pair of papers, we complete the construction of Seiberg-Witten-like invariants for smooth four-manifolds equipped with broken fibrations, prove an index formula, and compute some examples.
Infinitely many contact 3-manifolds each admitting infinitely many, pairwise non-diffeomorphic Stein fillings are constructed. We use Lefschetz fibrations in our constructions and compute their first homologies to distinguish the fillings.
We show that there are vast families of contact 3-manifolds each member of which admits infinitely many Stein fillings with arbitrarily big euler characteristics and arbitrarily small signatures ---which disproves a conjecture of Stipsicz…
The well-known fact that any genus $g$ symplectic Lefschetz fibration $ X^{4}\to S^{2}$ is given by a word that is equal to the identity element in the mapping class group and each of whose elements is given by a positive Dehn twist,…
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…