Related papers: Immersed projective planes, Arf invariants and eve…

We develop strong lower bounds for the span of the projective Stiefel manifolds $X_{n,r}=O(n)/(O(n-r)\times \mathbb Z/2)$, which enable very accurate (in many cases exact) estimates of the span. The technique, for the most part, involves…

Fintushel and Stern have proved that if S \subset X is a symplectic surface in a symplectic 4-manifold such that S has simply-connected complement and nonnegative self-intersection, then there are infinitely many topologically equivalent…

A smooth four manifold is of finite type $r$ if its Donaldson invariant satisfies D((x^2-4)^r)=0. We prove that every simply connected manifold is of finite type by using the structure of Donaldson invariants in the presence of immersed…

Any oriented Riemannian manifold with a Spin-structure defines a spectral triple, so the spectral triple can be regarded as a noncommutative Spin-manifold. Otherwise for any unoriented Riemannian manifold there is the two-fold covering by…

We give some new explicit examples of putatively optimal projective spherical designs. i.e., ones for which there is numerical evidence that they are of minimal size. These form continuous families, and so have little apparent symmetry in…

Inspired by Le Calvez' theory of transverse foliations for dynamical systems of surfaces, we introduce a dynamical invariant, denoted by N, for Hamiltonians of any surface other than the sphere. When the surface is the plane or is closed…

For a positive integer r, an r-spin topological quantum field theory is a 2-dimensional TQFT with tangential structure given by the r-fold cover of SO_2 . In particular, such a TQFT assigns a scalar invariant to every closed r-spin surface…

In this paper, we introduce the concept of 3-alterfolds with embedded separating surfaces. When the separating surface is decorated by a spherical fusion category, we obtain quantum invariants of 3-alterfold, which is consistent with many…

We study closed, oriented 4-manifolds whose fundamental group is that of a closed, oriented, aspherical 3-manifold. We show that two such 4-manifolds are stably diffeomorphic if and only if they have the same w_2-type and their equivariant…

The squashed 7-sphere $S^{7}$ is a 7-sphere with an Einstein metric given by the canonical variation and its cone $\mathbb{R}^{8} - \{ 0 \}$ has full holonomy ${\rm Spin}(7)$. There is a canonical calibrating 4-form $\Phi$ on…

Properties of invariant, anti-invariant and slant isometrically immersed submanifolds of metallic Riemannian manifolds are given with a special view towards the induced $\Sigma$-structure. Examples of such metallic manifolds are also given.

In this article, we give new means of constructing and distinguishing closed exotic four-manifolds. Using Heegaard Floer homology, we define new closed four-manifold invariants that are distinct from the Seiberg--Witten and Bauer--Furuta…

We show that infinitely many of the simply connected 4-manifolds constructed by Levine and Lidman that do not admit PL spines actually admit topological spines.

This thesis is concerned with the residues modulo 4 and 8 of the signature of a 4k-dimensional oriented geometric Poincare complex. The Z_8-valued Brown-Kervaire invariant of Z_4-valued quadratic forms is used to prove that if the signature…

Recently Arnold's $\St$ and $J^{\pm}$ invariants of generic planar curves have been generalized to the case of generic planar wave fronts. We generalize these invariants to the case of wave fronts on an arbitrary surface $F$. All invariants…

From a handlebody-theoretic perspective, the simplest compact, contractible 4-manifolds, other than the 4-ball, are Mazur manifolds. We produce the first pairs of Mazur manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic. Our…

We construct infinitely many smooth 4-manifolds which are homotopy equivalent to $S^2$ but do not admit a spine, i.e., a piecewise-linear embedding of $S^2$ which realizes the homotopy equivalence. This is the remaining case in the…

Generalized Donaldson invariants of 4-manifolds are defined, using moduli spaces of anti-self-dual connections with structure group SU(N) or PSU(N). Some values of the invariants are calculated for the case that the 4-manifold arises by the…

We give a simple axiomatic definition of a rational-valued invariant s(W,V,e) of triples (W,V,e), where W is a (smooth, oriented, closed) 6-manifold and V is a 3-submanifold of W, and where e is a second rational cohomology class of the…

Since their introduction in 1994, the Seiberg-Witten invariants have become one of the main tools used in 4-manifold theory. In this thesis, we will use these invariants to identify sufficient conditions for a 3-manifold to fibre over a…