Related papers: Covering moves and Kirby calculus

We construct a braided monoidal functor $J_4$ from Bobtcheva and Piergallini's category $4\mathrm{HB}$ of connected 4-dimensional 2-handlebodies (up to 2-deformations) to an arbitrary unimodular ribbon category $\mathcal{C}$, which is not…

We prove that the canonical 4-dimensional surgery problems can be solved after passing to a double cover. This contrasts the long-standing conjecture about the validity of the topological surgery theorem for arbitrary fundamental groups…

We show that any homologically non-trivial Dehn twist of a compact surface F with boundary is the lifting of a half-twist in the braid group B_n, with respect to a suitable branched covering p : F -> B^2. In particular, we allow the surface…

We construct branched double coverings by certain direct products of manifolds for connected sums of copies of sphere bundles over the 2-sphere. As an application we answer a question of Kotschick and Loeh up to dimension five. More…

We prove that any closed simply-connected smooth 4-manifold is 16-fold branched covered by a product of an orientable surface with the 2-torus, where the construction is natural with respect to spin structures. In particular this solves…

In this paper we study the homeomorphisms of the disk that are liftable with respect to a simple branched covering. Since any such homeomorphism maps the branch set of the covering onto itself and liftability is invariant up to isotopy…

We give a survey of geometric approaches to the topological 4-dimensional surgery and 5-dimensional s-cobordism conjectures, with a focus on the study of surfaces in 4-manifolds. The geometric lemma underlying these conjectures is a…

We address the problem of classification of hyper-K\"ahler fourfolds with $b_2=23$. In particular we prove some special cases of the Conjecture of O'Grady about hyper-K\"ahler $4$-folds numerically equivalent to the Hilbert scheme of two…

A 2-dimensional braid over an oriented surface-knot $F$ is presented by a graph called a chart on a surface diagram of $F$. We consider 2-dimensional braids obtained by an addition of 1-handles equipped with chart loops. We introduce moves…

For a branched cover between two closed orientable surfaces, the Riemann-Hurwitz formula relates the Euler characteristics of the surfaces, the total degree of the cover, and the total length of the partitions of the degree given by the…

Alternative proof is given for an earlier presented result that if a link in 3-space bounds a compact oriented proper surface (without closed component) in the upper half 4-space, then the link bounds a ribbon surface in the upper half…

We present a handlebody construction of small symplectic caps, and hence of small closed symplectic 4-manifolds. We use this to construct handlebody descriptions of symplectic embeddings of rational homology balls in…

Suppose there are two framed links in a compact, connected 3-manifold (possibly with boundary, or non-orientable) such that the associated 3-manifolds obtained by surgery are homeomorphic (relative to their common boundary, if there is…

We prove that every 4-dimensional oriented handlebody without 3- and 4-handles can be modified to admit infinitely many exotic smooth structures, and moreover prove that their genus functions are pairwise equivalent. We furthermore show…

We show that, given $d \geq 4$ and two closed connected oriented PL $4$-manifolds $M$ and $N$ such that $N$ has a handle decomposition with no $1$- and $3$-handles, there exists a $d$-fold simple branched covering $p \colon M \darrow{d} N$…

This note presents the handlebody argument for modifying achiral Lefschetz singularities into broken Lefschetz fibrations, yielding a handlebody proof of the existence of broken Lefschetz fibrations on arbitrary closed smooth oriented…

In this paper we describe braid equivalence for knots and links in a 3-manifold $M$ obtained by rational surgery along a framed link in $S^3$. We first prove a sharpened version of the Reidemeister theorem for links in $M$. We then give…

Knots naturally appear in continuous dynamical systems as flow periodic trajectories. However, discrete dynamical systems are also closely connected with the theory of knots and links. For example, for Pixton diffeomorphisms, the…

The stable Kauffman conjecture posits that a knot in $S^3$ is slice if and only if it admits a slice derivative. We prove a related statement: A knot is handle-ribbon (also called strongly homotopy-ribbon) in a homotopy 4-ball $B$ if and…

Building on the work of Nenciu we provide examples of non-factorizable ribbon Hopf algebras, and introduce a stronger notion of non-factorizability. These algebras are designed to provide invariants of $4$-dimensional $2$-handlebodies up to…