Related papers: Homotopy invariance of higher signatures and 3-man…

The Yamabe invariant is an invariant of a closed smooth manifold defined using conformal geometry and the scalar curvature. Recently, Petean showed that the Yamabe invariant is non-negative for all closed simply connected manifolds of…

We investigate the behavior of the higher-order degrees, db_n, of a finitely presented group G. These db_n are functions from H^1(G;Z) to Z whose values are the degrees certain higher-order Alexander polynomials. We show that if def(G) is…

We determine which three-manifolds are dominated by products. The result is that a closed, oriented, connected three-manifold is dominated by a product if and only if it is finitely covered either by a product or by a connected sum of…

In this article, we classify (non-compact) $3$-manifolds with uniformly positive scalar curvature. Precisely, we show that an oriented $3$-manifold has a complete metric with uniformly positive scalar curvature if and only if it is…

Implementing an idea due to John Baez and James Dolan we define new invariants of Whitney stratified manifolds by considering the homotopy theory of smooth transversal maps. To each Whitney stratified manifold we assign transversal homotopy…

We classify pairs $(M,G)$ where $M$ is a $3$--dimensional simply connected smooth manifold and $G$ a Lie group acting on $M$ transitively, effectively with compact isotropy group.

Using geometric arguments, we compute the group of homotopy classes of maps from a closed $(n+1)$-dimensional manifold to the $n$-sphere for $n \geq 3$. Our work extends results from Kirby, Melvin and Teichner for closed oriented…

We define an invariant for the existence of r pointwise linearly independent sections in the tangent bundle of a closed manifold. For low values of r, explicit computations of the homotopy groups of certain Thom spectra combined with…

We give a complete proof of Thurston's Orbifold Theorem for very good 3-orbifolds of cyclic type. An orbifold is said to be very good when it has a finite cover which is a manifold. A 3-orbifold is of cyclic type if the singular set is a…

Mapping-class groups of 3-manifolds feature as symmetry groups in canonical quantum gravity. They are an obvious source through which topological information could be transmitted into the quantum theory. If treated as gauge symmetries,…

We address a conjecture that $\pi_1$-surjective maps between closed aspherical 3-manifolds having the same rank on $\pi_1$ must be of non-zero degree. The conjecture is proved for Seifert manifolds, which is used in constructing the first…

Linear upper bounds are provided for the size of the torsion homology of negatively curved manifolds of finite volume in all dimensions $d\ne 3$. This extends a classical theorem by Gromov. In dimension $3$, as opposed to the Betti numbers,…

We show that the Thurston norm of any irreducible 3-manifold can be detected using twisted Reidemeister torsions corresponding to integral representations and also corresponding to representations over finite fields. In particular our…

Thurston norms are invariants of 3-manifolds defined on their second homology vector spaces, and understanding the shape of their dual unit ball is a (widely) open problem. W. Thurston showed that every symmetric polygon in Z^2, whose…

We prove that the homology of the mapping class group of any 3-manifold stabilizes under connected sum and boundary connected sum with an arbitrary 3-manifold when both manifolds are compact and orientable. The stabilization also holds for…

We prove that any smooth foliation that admits a Riemannian foliation structure has a well-defined basic signature, and this geometrically defined invariant is actually a foliated homotopy invariant. We also show that foliated homotopic…

This paper gives an algebraic conjecture which is shown to be equivalent to Thurston's Geometrization Conjecture for closed, orientable 3-manifolds. It generalizes the Stallings-Jaco theorem which established a similar result for the…

A new quantum gauge model is proposed. From this quantum gauge model we derive a quantum invariant of 3-manifolds. We show that this quantum invariant of 3-manifolds gives a classification of closed (orientable and connected) 3-manifolds.…

We show that a closed non-orientable $3$-manifold admits a positive scalar curvature metric if and only if its orientation double cover does; however, for each $4\le n\le 7$, there exist infinitely many smooth non-orientable $n$-manifolds…

Let P be a connected smooth p-manifold. We describe the group of all cobordism classes of smooth maps of n-manifolds to P with singularities of a given $cal K$-invariant class in terms of certain stable homotopy groups by applying the…