Related papers: Curvature, Connected Sums, and Seiberg-Witten Theo…
Using reduced Gromov-Witten theory, we define new invariants which capture the enumerative geometry of curves on holomorphic symplectic 4-folds. The invariants are analogous to the BPS counts of Gopakumar and Vafa for Calabi-Yau 3-folds,…
The invariant theory for conformal hypersurfaces is studied by treating these as the conformal infinity of a conformally compact manifold: For a given conformal hypersurface embedding, a distinguished ambient metric is found (within its…
This article presents a new and more elementary proof of the main Seiberg-Witten-based obstruction to the existence of Einstein metrics on smooth compact 4-manifolds. It also introduces a new smooth manifold invariant which conveniently…
We shall prove a new non-vanishing theorem for the stable cohomotopy Seiberg-Witten invariant of connected sums of 4-manifolds with positive first Betti number. The non-vanishing theorem enables us to find many new examples of 4-manifolds…
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.
Given a conformally variational scalar Riemannian invariant $I$, we identify a sufficient condition for a compact Riemannian manifold to admit finite regular coverings with many nonhomothetic conformal rescalings with $I$ constant. We also…
We establish constraints on the topology of smooth Lefschetz fibrations with $4$-dimensional fibers, by studying the family Bauer-Furuta invariant. To compute this invariant, we analyze the framed bordism class of 1-dimensional…
We define a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-valued invariant for transversely-intersecting coassociative $4$-folds equipped with spin structures. Our main result shows this invariant provides an obstruction to separating two such coassociatives through a…
The Bauer-Furuta invariants of smooth 4-manifolds are investigated from a functorial point of view. This leads to a definition of equivariant Bauer-Furuta invariants for compact Lie group actions. These are studied in Galois covering…
The goal of this paper is to give a new proof of a theorem of Meng and Taubes that identifies the Seiberg-Witten invariants of 3-manifolds with Milnor torsion. The point of view here will be that of topological quantum field theory. In…
We define relative Gromov-Witten invariants of a symplectic manifold relative to a codimension two symplectic submanifold. These invariants are the key ingredients in the symplectic sum formula of [IP4]. The main step is the construction of…
We introduce a gauge-theoretic integer lift of the Rohlin invariant of a smooth 4-manifold X with the homology of $S^1 \times S^3$. The invariant has two terms; one is a count of solutions to the Seiberg-Witten equations on X, and the other…
We complete the classification (started by Bray and the second author) of all closed 3-manifolds with Yamabe invariant greater than that of $\RP^3$, by showing that such manifolds are either $S^3$ or finite connected sums $# m(S^2 \times…
It was proved by Graham and Witten in 1999 that conformal invariants of submanifolds can be obtained via volume renormalization of minimal surfaces in conformally compact Einstein manifolds. The conformal invariant of a submanifold $\Sigma$…
We prove a surgery formula for the ordinary Seiberg-Witten invariants of smooth $4$-manifolds with $b_1 =1$. Our formula expresses the Seiberg-Witten invariants of the manifold after the surgery, in terms of the original Seiberg-Witten…
We will report some results concerning the Yamabe problem and the Nirenberg problem. Related topics will also be discussed. Such studies have led to new results on some conformally invariant fully nonlinear equations arising from geometry.…
The Yamabe invariant is a diffeomorphism invariant of smooth compact manifolds that arises from the normalized Einstein-Hilbert functional. This article highlights the manner in which one compelling open problem regarding the Yamabe…
We introduce a sequence of conformally invariant scalar curvature quantities, defined along the conformal infinity of a conformally compact (CC) manifold, that measure the failure of a CC metric to have constant negative scalar curvature in…
The first part of this paper exposits a simple geometric description of the Kirby-Siebenmann invariant of a 4--manifold in terms of a quadratic refinement of its intersection form. This is the first in a sequence of higher-order…
A localisation of the category of n-manifolds is introduced by formally inverting the connected sum construction with a chosen n-manifold Y. On the level of automorphism groups, this leads to the stable diffeomorphism groups of n-manifolds.…