Related papers: Exotic smooth structures on $CP^2#5{\bar CP^2}$

Introducing the notion of stabilized fundamental group for the complement of a branch curve in $CP^2$, we define effectively computable invariants of symplectic 4-manifolds that generalize those previously introduced by Moishezon and…

We show that a partially hyperbolic system can have at most a finite number of compact center-stable submanifolds. We also give sufficient conditions for these submanifolds to exist and consider the question of whether they can intersect…

We study smooth, proper embeddings of noncompact surfaces in 4-manifolds, focusing on exotic planes and annuli, i.e., embeddings pairwise homeomorphic to the standard embeddings of R^2 and R^2-int D^2 in R^4. We encounter two uncountable…

We construct a new family {K_n} of simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds with the property c_1^2(K_n)/chi(K_n) -> 9 (as n goes to infinity).

Numerous structural findings of homology manifolds have been derived in various ways in relation to $g_2$-values. The homology $4$-manifolds with $g_2\leq 5$ are characterized combinatorially in this article. It is well-known that all…

Two constructions of contact manifolds are presented: (i) products of S^1 with manifolds admitting a suitable decomposition into two exact symplectic pieces and (ii) fibre connected sums along isotropic circles. Baykur has found a…

We show that any finitely presented group with an index two subgroup is realized as the fundamental group of a closed smooth non-orientable four-manifold that admits an exotic smooth structure, which is obtained by performing a Gluck twist.…

In this paper we clarify an issue in the knot surgery construction of Fintushel and Stern. Using knot surgery, they construct an infinite number of smooth structures on 4-manifolds satisfying certain conditions, but they do not explicitly…

We show that double cosets of the infinite symmetric group with respect to some special subgroups admit natural structures of semigroups. We interpret elements of such semigroups in combinatorial terms (chips, colored graphs,…

We show that there exist infinitely many pairwise distinct non-closed G_2-manifolds (some of which have holonomy full G_2) such that they admit co-oriented contact structures and have co-oriented contact submanifolds which are also…

We prove that the rational blowdown, a surgery on smooth 4-manifolds introduced by Fintushel and Stern, can be performed in the symplectic category. As a consequence, interesting families of smooth 4-manifolds, including the exotic $K3$…

We define a new 4-dimensional symplectic cut and paste operation which is analogous to Fintushel and Stern's rational blow-down. We use this operation to produce multiple constructions of symplectic smoothly exotic complex projective space…

By studying the example of smooth structures on CP^2#3(-CP^2) we illustrate how surgery on a single embedded nullhomologous torus can be utilized to change the symplectic structure, the Seiberg-Witten invariant, and hence the smooth…

When two smooth manifold bundles over the same base are fiberwise tangentially homeomorphic, the difference is measured by a homology class in the total space of the bundle. We call this the relative smooth structure class. Rationally and…

The rational homology balls $B_n$ appeared in Fintushel and Stern's rational blow-down construction [FS] and were subsequently used (e.g. Fintushel-Stern[FS4], Park[Pa2]) to construct exotic smooth manifolds with small Euler numbers. We…

We produce examples of pairwise non-diffeomorphic closed irreducible 4-manifolds with non-trivial free abelian fundamental group of rank less than three and small Euler characteristic. These exotic smooth structures become standard after…

We give new examples of closed smooth 4-manifolds which support singular metrics of nonpositive curvature, but no smooth ones, thereby answering affirmatively a question of Gromov. The obstruction comes from patterns of incompressible…

We show that there exist infinitely many simply connected compact Stein 4-manifolds with b_2=2 such that they are all homeomorhic but mutually non-diffeomorphic, and they are Stein fillings of the same contact 3-manifold on their…

We give new rational blowdown constructions of exotic CP^2#n(-CP^2) (5\leq n\leq 9) without using elliptic fibrations. We also show that our 4-manifolds admit handle decompositions without 1- and 3-handles, for 7\leq n\leq 9. A strategy for…

We exhibit many examples of closed symplectic manifolds on which there is an autonomous Hamiltonian whose associated flow has no nonconstant periodic orbits (the only previous explicit example in the literature was the torus T^2n (n\geq 2)…