Related papers: Whitney towers and the Kontsevich integral
A Riemann-Cartan manifold is a Riemannian manifold endowed with an affine connection which is compatible with the metric tensor. This affine connection is not necessarily torsion free. Under the assumption that the manifold is a homogeneous…
We draw connections between contact topology and Maxwell fields in vacuo on 3-dimensional closed Riemannian submanifolds in 4-dimensional Lorentzian manifolds. This is accomplished by showing that contact topological methods can be applied…
A formula is given for the Seiberg-Witten invariants of a 4-manifold that is cut along certain kinds of 3-dimensional tori. The formula involves a Seiberg-Witten invariant for each of the resulting pieces.
We propose an abelian categorification of $\hat{Z}$-invariants for Seifert $3$-manifolds. First, we give a recursive combinatorial derivation of these $\hat{Z}$-invariants using graphs with certain hypercubic structures. Next, we consider…
This is the third in our series of papers relating gauge theoretic invariants of certain 4-manifolds with invariants of 3-manifolds derived from Rohlin's theorem. Such relations are well-known in dimension three, starting with Casson's…
The polynomial invariants $q_d$ for a large class of smooth 4-manifolds are shown to satisfy universal relations. The relations reflect the possible genera of embedded surfaces in the 4-manifold and lead to a structure theorem for the…
We demonstrate the existence of numerous non-spin 4-manifolds for which the smooth Nielsen realization problem fails; namely, there exist finite subgroups of their mapping class groups that cannot be realized by any group of…
We consider an algebra of (classical or virtual) tangles over an ordered circuit operad and introduce Conway-type invariants of tangles which respect this algebraic structure. The resulting invariants contain both the coefficients of the…
This article surveys our ongoing project about the relationship between invariants extending the classical Rohlin invariant of homology spheres and those coming from 4-dimensional (Yang-Mills) gauge theory. The main conjecture towards which…
To each link $L$ in $S^3$ we associate a collection of certain labelled directed trees, called width trees. We interpret some classical and new topological link invariants in terms of these width trees and show how the geometric structure…
In this paper we develop the theory of finite-type invariants for homologically nontrivial 3-manifolds. We construct an infinite-dimensional affine space with a hypersurface in it corresponding to manifolds with Morse singularities.…
It has been folklore for several years in the knot theory community that certain integrals on configuration space, originally motivated by perturbation theory for the Chern-Simons field theory, converge and yield knot invariants. This was…
I review some recent results on four-manifold invariants which have been obtained in the context of topological quantum field theory. I focus on three different aspects: (a) the computation of correlation functions, which give explicit…
In the course of classifying the homogeneous permutations, Cameron introduced the viewpoint of permutations as structures in a language of two linear orders, and this structural viewpoint is taken up here. The majority of this thesis is…
David Gabai recently proved a smooth 4-dimensional "Light Bulb Theorem" in the absence of 2-torsion in the fundamental group. We extend his result to 4-manifolds with arbitrary fundamental group by showing that an invariant of Mike Freedman…
We generalize the braid algebra to the case of loops with intersections. We introduce the Reidemeister moves for 4 and 6-valent vertices to have a theory of rigid vertex equivalence. By considering representations of the extended braid…
The paper contains a talk given by the author at the Banach Center in Spring 1995. It recapitulates author's approach to construction of topological invariants of the Reshetikhin-Turaev-Witten type of 3- and 4-dimensional manifolds in the…
We develop a complete obstruction theory for the $\mathbb{Z}_2$-index of a compact connected 4-dimensional manifold with free involution. This $\mathbb{Z}_2$-index, equal to the minimum integer $n$ for which there exists an equivariant map…
We study Thurston equivalence classes of quadratic post-critically finite branched coverings. For these maps, we introduce and study invariant spanning trees. We give a computational procedure for searching for invariant spanning trees.…
The present article is the first in a series whose ultimate goal is to prove the Kotschick-Morgan conjecture concerning the wall-crossing formula for the Donaldson invariants of a four-manifold with b^+ = 1. The conjecture asserts that the…