Related papers: Exotic Smooth Structures on Small 4-Manifolds with…
We define family versions of the invariant of 4-manifolds with contact boundary due to Kronheimer and Mrowka and use these to detect exotic diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds with boundary. Further, we show the existence of the first example of…
The main result of this paper states that a symplectic s-cobordism of elliptic 3-manifolds is diffeomorphic to a product (assuming a canonical contact structure on the boundary). Based on this theorem, we conjecture that a smooth…
We construct stable minimal hypersurfaces with simple topology in certain compact $4$-manifolds $X$ with boundary, where $X$ embeds into a smooth manifold homeomorphic to $S^4$. For example, if $X$ is equipped with a Riemannian metric $g$…
An explicit example of an exotic symplectic $\mathbf{R}^6$ is given. Together with an earlier known example on $\mathbf{R}^4$, this yields an explicit exotic symplectic form on $\mathbf{R}^{2n}$ for all $n\geq2$.
We develop the Gompf fiber connected sum operation for symplectic orbifolds. We use it to construct a symplectic 4-orbifold with $b_1=0$ and containing symplectic surfaces of genus 1 and 2 that are disjoint and span the rational homology.…
We mostly determine which closed smooth oriented 4-manifolds fibering over lower dimensional manifolds are virtually symplectic, i.e. finitely covered by symplectic 4-manifolds.
We construct a symplectic structure on a disc that admits a compactly supported symplectomorphism which is not smoothly isotopic to the identity. The symplectic structure has an overtwisted concave end; the construction of the…
We present a handlebody construction of small symplectic caps, and hence of small closed symplectic 4-manifolds. We use this to construct handlebody descriptions of symplectic embeddings of rational homology balls in…
This is a survey paper on the space of symplectic structures on closed 4-manifolds, for the Proceedings ICCM 2004
This article analyzes the interplay between symplectic geometry in dimension four and the invariants for smooth four-manifolds constructed using holomorphic triangles introduced in math.SG/0110169. Specifically, we establish a non-vanishing…
We show that for every odd prime $q$, there exists an infinite family $\{M_i\}_{i=1}^{\infty}$ of topological 4-manifolds that are all stably homeomorphic to one another, all the manifolds $M_i$ have isometric rank one equivariant…
Let $N$ be a smooth manifold that is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to a closed hyperbolic manifold $M$. In this paper, we study the extent to which $N$ admits as much symmetry as $M$. Our main results are examples of $N$ that exhibit…
We construct uncountably many discrete groups of type $FP$; in particular we construct groups of type $FP$ that do not embed in any finitely presented group. We compute the ordinary, $\ell^2$- and compactly-supported cohomology of these…
In this paper, we construct an infinite families of group $G$ of order $4p^m$ which can be an automorphism group of some regular polytope with type $\{p, 2p\}$, where $m \geq 3$ and $p$ is an odd prime. For $p=3$, our polytopes are the…
We review recent developments in differential topology with special concern for their possible significance to physical theories, especially general relativity. In particular we are concerned here with the discovery of the existence of…
It is an important question whether it is possible to put a geometry on a given manifold or not. It is well known that any simply connected closed manifold admitting a real projective structure must be a sphere. Therefore, any simply…
We show that there exist infinitely many simply connected compact Stein 4-manifolds with b_2=2 such that they are all homeomorhic but mutually non-diffeomorphic, and they are Stein fillings of the same contact 3-manifold on their…
For each integer $n$ we construct a simply connected $4$-manifold $X$ admitting a smoothly embedded surface $\Sigma$ of self intersection number $n$ such that the complement of the surface has non-trivial fundamental group. This answers a…
We extract from a toric model of the Chekanov-Schlenk exotic torus in $\mathbb{CP}^2$ methods of construction of Lagrangian submanifolds in toric symplectic manifolds. These constructions allow for some control of the monotonicity. We…
We give a characterization of irreducible symplectic fourfolds which are given as Hilbert scheme of points on a K3 surface.