Related papers: Twisted Alexander polynomials and symplectic struc…

We study incompressible surfaces constructed by Culler-Shalen theory in the context of twisted Alexander polynomials. For a $1$st cohomology class of a $3$-manifold the coefficients of twisted Alexander polynomials induce regular functions…

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 pre-order defined on the category of contact manifolds by arbitrary symplectic cobordisms is considerably less rigid than its counterparts for exact or Stein cobordisms: in particular, we exhibit large new classes of…

The coefficients of twisted Alexander polynomials of a knot induce regular functions of the $SL_2(\mathbb{C})$-character variety. We prove that the function of the highest degree has a finite value at an ideal point which gives a minimal…

We study symplectic structures on K\"ahler surfaces with p_g = 0. We give an example of a projective surface which admits a symplectic structure which is not compatible with any K\"ahler metric.

We explicitly construct several Poisson structures with compact support. For example, we show that any Poisson structure on $\R^n$ with polynomial coefficients of degree at most two can be modified outside an open ball, such that it becomes…

In this paper we present a sequence of link invariants, defined from twisted Alexander polynomials, and discuss their effectiveness in distinguish knots. In particular, we recast and extend by geometric means a recent result of Silver and…

We calculate the twisted Alexander polynomials of all tunnel number one Montesinos knots associated to their $SL_2(\mathbb{C})$-representations and obtain their leading coefficients and degrees. As a corollary, we get some interesting…

In this paper we apply the twisted Alexander polynomial to study the fibering and genus detecting problems for oriented links. In particular we generalize a conjecture of Dunfield, Friedl and Jackson on the torsion polynomial of hyperbolic…

We give an extension of Fox's formula of the Alexander polynomial for double branched covers over the three-sphere. Our formula provides the Reidemeister torsion of a double branched cover along a knot for a non-trivial one dimensional…

We give a survey of some recent papers by the authors and Masaaki Wada relating the twisted Alexander polynomial with a partial order on the set of prime knots. We also give examples and pose open problems.

We show that any knot which is smoothly the closure of a 3-braid cannot be Lagrangian concordant to and from the maximum Thurston-Bennequin Legendrian unknot except the unknot itself. Our obstruction comes from drawing the Weinstein…

Given a homomorphism from a knot group to a fixed group, we introduce an element of a $K_1$-group, which is a generalization of (twisted) Alexander polynomials. We compare this $K_1$-class with other Alexander polynomials. In terms of…

Let $Y_-$ and $Y_+$ be two compact 3-manifolds with empty or toroidal boundary. A 4-dimensional ribbon homology cobordism is a homologically trivial cobordism built with 1-handles and 2-handles. In this note, following the work of Friedl…

It follows from earlier work of Silver-Williams and the authors that twisted Alexander polynomials detect the unknot and the Hopf link. We now show that twisted Alexander polynomials also detect the trefoil and the figure-8 knot, that…

We give a necessary, and in some cases sufficient, condition for sliceness inside the family of pretzel knots $P (p_1,...,p_n)$ with one $p_i$ even. The three stranded case yields two interesting families of examples: the first consists of…

For a 3-manifold M, McMullen derived from the Alexander polynomial of M a norm on H^1(M, R) called the Alexander norm. He showed that the Thurston norm on H^1(M, R), which measures the complexity of a dual surface, is an upper bound for the…

For a Fedosov manifold (symplectic manifold equipped with a symplectic torsion-free affine connection $\nabla$) admitting a metaplectic structure, we shall investigate two sequences of first order differential operators acting on sections…

We prove that every symplectic 4-manifold admits a trisection that is compatible with the symplectic structure in the sense that the symplectic form induces a Weinstein structure on each of the three sectors of the trisection. Along the…

Shifted symplectic Lie and $L_\infty$ algebroids model formal neighbourhoods of manifolds in shifted symplectic stacks, and serve as target spaces for twisted variants of classical AKSZ topological field theory. In this paper, we classify…