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

In 1998, R. Gompf defined a homotopy invariant $\theta_G$ of oriented 2-plane fields in 3-manifolds. This invariant is defined for oriented 2-plane fields $\xi$ in a closed oriented 3-manifold $M$ when the first Chern class $c_1(\xi)$ is a…

We define a norm on the homology of a foliated manifold, which refines and majorizes the usual Gromov norm on homology. This norm depends in an upper semi-continuous way on the underlying foliation, in the geometric topology, and can…

We prove that fundamental groups of non-orientable 3-manifolds have a solvable conjugacy problem, and construct an algorithm. Together with our earlier work on the conjugacy problem in groups on orientable geometrizable 3-manifolds, all…

Using recent results of Agol, Przytycki-Wise and Wise we show that twisted Alexander polynomials detect the Thurston norm of any irreducible 3-manifold which is not a closed graph manifold.

We show that the higher homotopy groups of the moduli space of torus-invariant positive scalar curvature metrics on certain quasitoric manifolds are non-trivial.

We investigate the orderability properties of fundamental groups of 3-dimensional manifolds. Many 3-manifold groups support left-invariant orderings, including all compact P^2-irreducible manifolds with positive first Betti number. For…

We prove a conjecture of Hutchings and Lee relating the Seiberg-Witten invariants of a closed 3-manifold X with b_1 > 0 to an invariant that `counts' gradient flow lines--including closed orbits--of a circle-valued Morse function on the…

Manin theories are a class of non-topological deformations of Chern-Simons theories that naturally realise the third-way mechanism and furthermore admit localisation despite not being supersymmetric in the usual sense. In this paper, we…

Given a triangulation of a closed, oriented, irreducible, atoroidal 3-manifold every oriented, incompressible surface may be isotoped into normal position relative to the triangulation. Such a normal oriented surface is then encoded by…

Classical work of Thurston and Gabai shows that finitely many taut sutured manifold hierarchies determine the Thurston norm of a compact oriented irreducible $3$-manifold with toroidal boundary. We give an explicit procedure to extract this…

We find a geometric invariant of isotopy classes of strongly irreducible Heegaard splittings of toroidal 3-manifolds. Combining this invariant with a theorem of R Weidmann, proved here in the appendix, we show that a closed, totally…

The Borel Conjecture predicts that closed aspherical manifolds are topological rigid. We want to investigate when a non-aspherical oriented connected closed manifold M is topological rigid in the following sense. If f: N --> M is an…

We show that the Thurston seminorms of all finite covers of an aspherical 3-manifold determine whether it is a graph manifold, a mixed 3-manifold or hyperbolic.

We prove that if the $m$-th homotopy group for $m \geq 2$ of a closed manifold has non-trivial invariants or coinvariants under the action of the fundamental group, then there exist infinitely many geometrically distinct closed geodesics…

We consider a homological enlargement of the mapping class group, defined by homology cylinders over a closed oriented surface (up to homology cobordism). These are important model objects in the recent Goussarov-Habiro theory of…

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…

These revised lecture notes are an expository account of part of the proof of Thurston's Ending Lamination Conjecture for Kleinian surface groups, which states that such groups are uniquely determined by invariants that describe the…

A survey of some results and open questions related to the following algebraic invariants of compact complex manifolds, that can be obtained from differential forms: cohomology groups, Chern classes, rational homotopy groups, and higher…

In this paper, it is explained that a topological invariant for 3-manifold $M$ with $b_1(M)=1$ can be constructed by applying Fukaya's Morse homotopy theoretic approach for Chern--Simons perturbation theory to a local system on $M$ of…

We prove a homotopy invariance result for a certain covering space of the space of ordered configurations of two points in $M \times X$ where $M$ is a closed smooth manifold and $X$ is any fixed aspherical space which is not a point.