Related papers: Homeomorphisms which are Dehn twists on the bounda…

We show that isotopy classes of simple closed curves in any oriented surface admit a quandle structure with operations induced by Dehn twists, the Dehn quandle of the surface. We further show that the monodromy of a Lefschetz fibration can…

We initiate the study of exotic Dehn twists along 3-manifolds $\neq S^3$ inside $4$-manifolds, which produces the first known examples of exotic diffeomorphisms of contractible 4-manifolds, more generally of definite 4-manifolds, and exotic…

The main theorem shows that if M is an irreducible compact connected orientable 3-manifold with non-empty boundary, then the classifying space BDiff(M rel dM) of the space of diffeomorphisms of M which restrict to the identity map on…

This paper extends the decorated Teichm\"uller theory developed before for punctured surfaces to the setting of ``bordered'' surfaces, i.e., surfaces with boundary, and there is non-trivial new structure discovered. The main new result…

We establish a correspondence between trisections of smooth, compact, oriented $4$--manifolds with connected boundary and diagrams describing these trisected $4$--manifolds. Such a diagram comes in the form of a compact, oriented surface…

We investigate several situations where the local homogeneity of a geometric structure on a dense open subset of a manifold implies the local homogeneity everywhere. This results in a strengthening of the conclusions in Gromov's open-dense…

Quoric manifolds are the quaternionic analogue of toric manifolds. They admit a locally nice action of $(S^3)^n$ and the quotient is a manifold with corners. We show that they satisfy equivariant rigidity. More precisely, any locally linear…

We extend the proof of automatic continuity for homeomorphism groups of manifolds to non-compact manifolds and manifolds with marked points and their mapping class groups. Specifically, we show that, for any manifold $M$ homeomorphic to the…

Let $M$ be a connected compact orientable surface, $f:M\to \mathbb{R}$ be a Morse function, and $h:M\to M$ be a diffeomorphism which preserves $f$ in the sense that $f\circ h = f$. We will show that if $h$ leaves invariant each regular…

Let $M^n(n\geq3)$ be an $n$-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold with harmonic curvature and positive scalar curvature. Assume that $M^n$ satisfies some integral pinching conditions. We give some rigidity theorems on compact manifolds…

Let K be a tame knot with irreducible exterior M(K) in a closed, connected, orientable 3--manifold Sigma such that pi_1(Sigma) is cyclic. If infinity is not a strict boundary slope, then the diameter of the set of strict boundary slopes of…

We give a short proof of Bing's characterization of $S^3$: a compact, connected 3-manifold $M$ is $S^3$ if and only if every knot in $M$ is isotopic into a ball.

In the focus of our paper is a system of axioms that serves as a basis for introducing structural data for $(2n,k)$-manifolds $M^{2n}$, where $M^{2n}$ is a smooth, compact $2n$-dimensional manifold with a smooth effective action of the…

We investigate two specific contractible manifolds (one Stein, and the other non-Stein) whose boundaries have non-trivial mapping class groups. In both cases we show that every diffeomorphism of their boundary extends to a diffeomorphism of…

We determine the bounded cohomology of the group of homeomorphisms of certain low-dimensional manifolds. In particular, for the group of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the circle and of the closed 2-disc, it is isomorphic to the…

We construct a sequence of pairs of 3-manifolds each with torus boundary and with the following two properties: 1) For the result of a carefully chosen glueing of the nth pair of 3-manifolds along their boundary tori, the ratio of the genus…

We describe of the topology of the geometric quotients of 2n dimensional compact connected symplectic manifolds with n-1 dimensional torus actions. When the isotropy weights at each fixed point are in general position, the quotient is…

It is well known that plane curves with the same endpoints are homotopic. An analogous claim for plane curves with the same endpoints and bounded curvature still remains open. In this work we find necessary and sufficient conditions for two…

We prove that every smooth CR manifold $M\subset\subset \C^n$, of hypersurface type, has a complex strip-manifold extension in $\C^n$. If $M$ is, in addition, pseudoconvex-oriented, it is the "exterior" boundary of the strip. In turn, the…

This paper presents, with explanatory details, the handle decompositions, fundamental groups and homology groups of 3-manifolds, including some knot complements. Hence, along this paper, when the word manifold appears it is implicit that…