Related papers: A counterexample to the strong version of Freedman…

The A-B slice problem is a reformulation of the topological 4-dimensional surgery conjecture in terms of decompositions of the 4-ball and link homotopy. We show that link groups, a recently developed invariant of 4-manifolds, provide an…

The A-B slice problem, a reformulation of the 4-dimensional topological surgery conjecture for free groups, is shown to admit a link-homotopy+ solution. The proof relies on geometric applications of the group-theoretic 2-Engel relation.…

We give two applications of the 2-Engel relation, classically studied in finite and Lie groups, to the 4-dimensional topological surgery conjecture. The A-B slice problem, a reformulation of the surgery conjecture for free groups, is shown…

A link in the 3-sphere is homotopically trivial, according to Milnor, if its components bound disjoint maps of disks in the 4-ball. This paper concerns the question of what spaces give rise to the same class of homotopically trivial links…

The validity of Freedman's disk theorem is known to depend only on the fundamental group. It was conjectured that it fails for nonabelian free fundamental groups. If this were true then surgery theory would work in dimension four. Recently,…

We present the Round Handle Problem, proposed by Freedman and Krushkal. It asks whether a collection of links, which contains the Generalised Borromean Rings, are slice in a 4-manifold R constructed from adding round handles to the four…

In the early 1980's Mike Freedman showed that all knots with trivial Alexander polynomial are topologically slice (with fundamental group Z). This paper contains the first new examples of topologically slice knots. In fact, we give a…

A link in the 3-sphere is called (smoothly) slice if its components bound disjoint smoothly embedded disks in the 4-ball. More generally, given a 4-manifold M with a distinguished circle in its boundary, a link in the 3-sphere is called…

Freedman and Krushkal showed that if the surgery conjecture and the $s$-cobordism conjecture hold for all topological 4-manifolds, then every link with pairwise zero linking numbers is topologically round handle slice. Kim, Powell, and…

We prove that the canonical 4-dimensional surgery problems can be solved after passing to a double cover. This contrasts the long-standing conjecture about the validity of the topological surgery theorem for arbitrary fundamental groups…

Topological 4-dimensional surgery is conjectured to fail, in general, for free fundamental groups. M. Freedman and P. Teichner have shown that surgery problems with an arbitrary fundamental group have a solution, provided they satisfy a…

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 prove a geometric refinement of Alexander duality for certain 2-complexes, the so-called gropes, embedded into 4-space. This refinement can be roughly formulated as saying that 4-dimensional Alexander duality preserves the disjoint Dwyer…

Let $\pi$ be a group satisfying the Farrell-Jones conjecture and assume that $B\pi$ is a 4-dimensional Poincar\'e duality space. We consider topological, closed, connected manifolds with fundamental group $\pi$ whose canonical map to $B\pi$…

We construct a non-free but aleph_1-separable, torsion-free abelian group G with a pure free subgroup B such that all subgroups of G disjoint from B are free and such that G/B is divisible. This answers a question of Irwin and shows that a…

Let $M_{\lambda}$ be the $\lambda$-component Milnor link. For $\lambda \ge 3$, we determine completely when a finite slope surgery along $M_{\lambda}$ yields a lens space including $S^3$ and $S^1\times S^2$, where {\it finite slope surgery}…

A conjecture of Coleman implies that only finitely many quaternion algebras over the rational numbers can be the endomorphism $\mathbf{Q}$-algebras of abelian surfaces over the complex numbers which can be defined over $\mathbf{Q}$. One may…

We use an estimate on the Thurston--Bennequin invariant of a Legendrian link in terms of its Kauffman-polynomial to show that links of topological unknots, e.g. the Borromean rings or the Whithead link, may not be represented by Legendrian…

We use the famous knot-theoretic consequence of Freedman's disc theorem---knots with trivial Alexander polynomial bound a locally-flat disc in the 4-ball---to prove the following generalization. The degree of the Alexander polynomial of a…

Even though the disk embedding theorem is not available in dimension 4 for free fundamental groups, some surgery problems may be shown to have topological solutions. We prove that surgery problems may be solved if one considers closed…