Related papers: Four-manifolds, geometries and knots
Let F a closed connected orientable surface bounding a genus g handlebody H. In this paper we find a finite set of generators for the subgroup E(2,g) of the pure mapping class group of the twice punctured torus PMCG(2,g), consisting of the…
This is a survey of the author's book "D-manifolds and d-orbifolds: a theory of derived differential geometry", available at http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/~joyce/dmanifolds.html We introduce a 2-category dMan of "d-manifolds", new geometric…
We compute in many classes of examples the first potentially interesting homotopy group of the space of embeddings of either an arc or a circle into a manifold $M$ of dimension $d\geq4$. In particular, if $M$ is a simply connected…
This article provides a review of the gauge-theoretic approach to Khovanov homology, framed in terms of a generalisation of Witten's original proposal. Concretely, the physical arguments underlying Witten's insights suggest that there is a…
We present two models for the space of knots which have endpoints at fixed boundary points in a manifold with boundary, one model defined as an inverse limit of spaces of maps between configuration spaces and another which is cosimplicial.…
Given two smooth, oriented, closed 4-manifolds $M_1$ and $M_2$, we construct two invariants, $D^P(M_1, M_2)$ and $D(M_1, M_2)$, coming from distances in the pants complex and the dual curve complex respectively. To do this, we adapt work of…
We continue our program initiated in [arXiv:0912.4261] to consider supersymmetric surface operators in a topologically-twisted N=2 pure SU(2) gauge theory, and apply them to the study of four-manifolds and related invariants. Elegant…
A polynomial knot in $\mathbb{R}^n$ is a smooth embedding of $\mathbb{R}$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$ such that the component functions are real polynomials. In the earlier paper with Mishra, we have studied the space $\mathcal{P}$ of polynomial…
The deep connection among braids, knots and topological physics has provided valuable insights into studying topological states in various physical systems. However, identifying distinct braid groups and knot topology embedded in…
We give explicit formulas for the ranks of the third and fourth homotopy groups of all oriented closed simply-connected four manifolds in terms of their second Betti numbers. We also show that the rational homotopy type of these manifolds…
In this paper we discuss the question how matter may emerge from space. For that purpose we consider the smoothness structure of spacetime as underlying structure for a geometrical model of matter. For a large class of compact 4-manifolds,…
We are interested in finite groups acting orientation-preservingly on 3-manifolds (arbitrary actions, ie not necessarily free actions). In particular we consider finite groups which contain an involution with nonempty connected fixed point…
We compute the topological simple structure set of closed manifolds which occur as total spaces of flat bundles over lens spaces S^l/(Z/p) with fiber an n-dimensjional torus T^n for an odd prime p and l greater or equal to 3, provided that…
We study the structure of the exteriors of gropes and Whitney towers in dimension 4, focusing on their fundamental groups. In particular we introduce a notion of unknottedness of gropes and Whitney towers in the 4-sphere. We prove that…
We prove that there exist infinitely many topologically slice knots which cannot bound a smooth null-homologous disk in any definite 4-manifold. Furthermore, we show that we can take such knots so that they are linearly independent in the…
The Kuperberg invariant is a topological invariant of closed 3-manifolds based on finite-dimensional Hopf algebras. In this paper, we initiate the program of constructing 4-manifold invariants in the spirit of Kuperberg's 3-manifold…
This paper investigates the geometric structures and properties of 8-dimensional manifolds with Spin(7)-holonomy. We focus on the characterization and implications of 4-planes within these manifolds, which are endowed with an almost…
We discuss 3-manifolds which are cyclic coverings of the 3-sphere, branched over 2-bridge knots and links. Different descriptions of these manifolds are presented: polyhedral, Heegaard diagram, Dehn surgery and coloured graph constructions.…
In this article we prove that, if $X$ is a smooth $4$-manifold containing an embedded double node neighborhood, all knot surgery $4$-manifolds $X_K$ are mutually diffeomorphic to each other after a connected sum with $\mathbb{CP}^2$. Hence,…
The existence of topologically slice knots that are of infinite order in the knot concordance group followed from Freedman's work on topological surgery and Donaldson's gauge theoretic approach to 4-manifolds. Here, as an application of…