Related papers: Surfaces in 4-manifolds and the surgery conjecture

We use topological surgery in dimension four to give sufficient conditions for the zero framed surgery manifold of a 3-component link to be homology cobordant to the 3-torus, which arises from zero framed surgery on the Borromean rings, via…

We present explicit algorithms for simplifying the topology of indefinite fibrations on 4-manifolds, which include broken Lefschetz fibrations and indefinite Morse 2-functions. The algorithms consist of sequences of moves, which modify…

A smooth five-dimensional s-cobordism becomes a smooth product if stabilized by a finite number n of $S^2xS^2x[0,1]$'s. We show that for amenable fundamental groups, the minimal n is subextensive in covers, i.e., n(cover)/index(cover) has…

We define a simplicial category called the category of derived manifolds. It contains the category of smooth manifolds as a full discrete subcategory, and it is closed under taking arbitrary intersections in a manifold. A derived manifold…

We study locally flat, compact, oriented surfaces in $4$-manifolds whose exteriors have infinite cyclic fundamental group. We give algebraic topological criteria for two such surfaces, with the same genus $g$, to be related by an ambient…

Constructing Morse functions and their higher dimensional versions or fold maps is fundamental, important and challenging in investigating the topologies and the differentiable structures of differentiable manifolds via Morse functions,…

This paper is dedicated to the study of deformations of coassociative 4-folds in a G_2 manifold which have conical singularities. We stratify the types of deformations allowed into three problems. The main result for each problem states…

Given a sequence of properly embedded minimal surfaces in a $3$-manifold with local bounds on area and genus, we prove subsequential convergence, smooth away from a discrete set, to a smooth embedded limit surface, possibly with…

Topological surgery is a mathematical technique used for creating new manifolds out of known ones. We observe that it occurs in natural phenomena where a sphere of dimension 0 or 1 is selected, forces are applied and the manifold in which…

In 1987 S Cappell and J Shaneson constructed an s-cobordism H from the quaternionic 3-manifold Q to itself, and asked whether H or any of its covers are trivial product cobordism? In this paper we study H, and in particular show that its…

We give a topological interpretation of the core group invariant of a surface embedded in S^4. We show that the group is isomorphic to the free product of the fundamental group of the double branch cover of S^4 with the surface as a…

Given a knot in $S^3$, one can associate to it a surface diffeomorphism in two different ways. First, an arbitrary knot in $S^{3}$ can be represented by braids, which can be thought of as diffeomorphisms of punctured disks. Second, if the…

We discuss some consequences Fintushel-Stern `knot surgery' operation on 4-manifolds coming from its handlebody description. We give some generalizations of this operation and give a counterexample to their conjecture.

A presymplectic structure on odd dimensional manifold is given by a closed 2-form which is nondegenerate, i.e., of maximal rank. We investigate geometry of presymplectic manifolds. Some basic theorems analogous to those in symplectic and…

The notion of a Bing cell is introduced, and it is used to define invariants, link groups, of 4-manifolds. Bing cells combine some features of both surfaces and 4-dimensional handlebodies, and the link group \lambda(M) measures certain…

We continue our program initiated in [arXiv:0912.4261] to consider supersymmetric surface operators in a topologically-twisted N=2 pure SU(2) gauge theory, and apply them to the study of four-manifolds and related invariants. Elegant…

Topological gauge theories in four dimensions which admit surface operators provide a natural framework for realizing homological knot invariants. Every such theory leads to an action of the braid group on branes on the corresponding moduli…

We investigate the possibility of embedding minimal abelian surfaces in smooth toric 4-folds with Picard number 2. The existence of such an embedding imposes conditions on the 4-fold, which we partly describe. On the other hand, we exhibit…

If M is a manifold with compressible boundary, we analyze essential disks in M, as well as incompressible, but not necessarily boundary incompressible, surfaces in M. We are most interested in the case where M is a handlebody or compression…

Assume that M is a compact n-dimensional manifold and that N is obtained by surgery along a k-dimensional sphere, k\le n-3. The smooth Yamabe invariants \sigma(M) and \sigma(N) satisfy \sigma(N)\ge min (\sigma(M),\Lambda) for \Lambda>0. We…