Related papers: On moves between branched coverings of S^3: The ca…

In this survey article we describe different ways of embedding fillings of contact 3-manifolds into closed symplectic 4-manifolds.

Trees with labelled leaves and with all other vertices of degree three play an important role in systematic biology and other areas of classification. A classical combinatorial result ensures that such trees can be uniquely reconstructed…

In this paper, we study surfaces embedded in $4$-manifolds. We give a complete set of moves relating banded unlink diagrams of isotopic surfaces in an arbitrary $4$-manifold. This extends work of Swenton and Kearton-Kurlin in $S^4$. As an…

A Heegaard diagram for a 3-manifold is regarded as a pair of simplexes in the complex of curves on a surface and a Heegaard splitting as a pair of subcomplexes generated by the equivalent diagrams. We relate geometric and combinatorial…

We describe interrelations between a topology structure of closed manifolds (orientable and non-orientable) of the dimension $n\geq 4$ and the structure of the non-wandering set of regular homeomorphisms, in particular, Morse-Smale…

It is well known that not every combinatorial configuration admits a geometric realization with points and lines. Moreover, some of them do not even admit realizations with pseudoline arrangements, i.e., they are not topological. In this…

We provide a complete set of two moves that suffice to relate any two open book decompositions of a given 3-manifold. One of the moves is the usual plumbing with a positive or negative Hopf band, while the other one is a special local…

This paper describes a way to subdivide a 3-manifold into angled blocks, namely polyhedral pieces that need not be simply connected. When the individual blocks carry dihedral angles that fit together in a consistent fashion, we prove that a…

The topology of symplectic 4-manifolds is related to that of singular plane curves via the concept of branched covers. Thus, various classification problems concerning symplectic 4-manifolds can be reformulated as questions about singular…

We give several criteria on a closed, oriented 3-manifold that will imply that it is the boundary of a (simply connected) 4-manifold that admits infinitely many distinct smooth structures. We also show that any weakly fillable contact…

Alexander's and Markov's theorems state that any link type in $R^3$ is represented by a closed braid and that such representations are related by some elementary operations called Markov moves. We generalize the notion of a braid to that in…

We develop a theory of link projections to trivalent spines of 3-manifolds. We prove a Reidemeister Theorem providing a set of combinatorial moves sufficient to relate the projections of isotopic links. We also show that any link admits a…

For any alternating knot, it is known that the double branched cover of the $3$-sphere branched over the knot is an $L$-space. We show that the three-fold cyclic branched cover is also an $L$-space for any genus one alternating knot.

A correspondence, by way of Heegaard splittings, between closed oriented 3-manifolds and pairs of surjections from a surface group to a free group has been studied by Stallings, Jaco, and Hempel. This correspondence, by way of trisections,…

We develop a technique for gluing relative trisection diagrams of $4$-manifolds with nonempty connected boundary to obtain trisection diagrams for closed $4$-manifolds. As an application, we describe a trisection of any closed $4$-manifold…

In this note, we discuss embeddings of $3$--manifolds via open books. First we show that every open book of every closed orientable $3$--manifold admits an open book embedding in any open book decompistion of $S^2 \times S^3$ and $S^2…

Closed (and simply-connected) manifolds whose dimensions are greater than 4 are classified via sophisticated algebraic and abstract theory such as surgery theory and homotopy theory. It is difficult to handle 3 or 4-dimensional closed…

We analyze four-dimensional symplectic manifolds of type $X=S^1 \times M^3$ where $M^3$ is an open $3$-manifold admitting inequivalent fibrations leading to inequivalent symplectic structures on $X$. For the case where $M^3 \subset S^3$ is…

In the author's earlier work there appeared a new way to specify any smooth closed 4-manifold by a surface diagram, which consists of an orientable surface decorated with simple closed curves. These curves are cyclically indexed, and each…

We show that standard cyclic actions on Brieskorn homology 3-spheres with non-empty fixed set do not extend smoothly to any contractible smooth 4-manifold it may bound. The quotient of any such extension would be an acyclic $4$-manifold…