Related papers: Four-manifold geography and superconformal symmetr…
In order to include nontrivial spatial topologies in the problem of quantum creation of a universe, it seems to be necessary to generalize the sum over compact, smooth 4-manifolds to a sum over finite-volume, compact 4-orbifolds. We…
Compact pseudo-Riemannian manifolds that have parallel Weyl tensor without being conformally flat or locally symmetric are known to exist in infinitely many dimensions greater than 4. We prove some general topological properties of such…
One approach to produce a pair of homeomorphic-but-not-diffeomophic closed 4-manifolds is to find a knot which is smoothly slice in one but not the other. This approach has never been run successfully. We give the first examples of a pair…
We prove that a compact, connected, and oriented 4-dimensional gradient $m$-quasi-Einstein manifold with $m\in [1, \infty]$ which is additionally a spin manifold must satisfy the Hitchin-Thorpe Inequality. We show further that the…
In this paper, we demonstrate a relation among Seiberg-Witten invariants which arises from embedded surfaces in four-manifolds whose self-intersection number is negative. These relations, together with Taubes' basic theorems on the…
We show that the Reshetikhin-Turaev-Walker invariant of 3-manifolds can be normalized to obtain an invariant of 4-dimensional thickenings of 2-complexes. Moreover when the underlying semisimple tortile category comes from the…
Techniques of gauge theory are used to define and compute an invariant of certain diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds. The invariant vanishes for any diffeomorphism which is smoothly isotopic to the identity. As an application, we give the first…
The main result of this paper asserts that if a Seifert fibered 4-manifold has nonzero Seiberg-Witten invariant, the homotopy class of regular fibers has infinite order. This is a nontrivial obstruction to smooth circle actions; as…
In these notes, we carefully analyze the properties of the "ramified" Seiberg-Witten equations associated with supersymmetric configurations of the Seiberg-Witten abelian gauge theory with surface operators on an oriented closed…
We prove that the problem of constructing biharmonic conformal maps on a $4$-dimensional Einstein manifold reduces to a Yamabe-type equation. This allows us to construct an infinite family of examples on the Euclidean 4-sphere. In addition,…
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 $B\pi$…
In this paper, we establish the existence of conformal deformations that uniformize fourth order curvature on 4-dimensional Riemannian manifolds with positive conformal invariants. Specifically, we prove that any closed, compact Riemannian…
We propose an explicit formula connecting Donaldson invariants and Seiberg-Witten invariants of a 4-manifold of simple type via Nekrasov's deformed partition function for the N=2 SUSY gauge theory with a single fundamental matter. This…
We prove conditionally that compact K\''ahler manifolds of algebraic dimension zero are (essentially) isogeneous to products of Kummer and `simple' ones, the latter being conjecturally bimeromorphically symplectic. `Simple' means: its…
A non-linear generalization of the Dirac operator in 4-dimensions, obtained by replacing the spinor representation with a hyperKahler manifold admitting certain symmetries, is considered. We show that the existence of a covariantly…
We prove that every suitable $4$-manifold with $b_1=0$ and with an embedded Riemann surface of genus $2$ is of simple type. We find a relationship between the basic classes of two of these $4$-manifolds and those of the connected sum along…
We consider two dimensional $\mathcal{N}=(4,4)$ superconformal field theories in the moduli space of symmetric orbifolds of K3. We complete a classification of the discrete groups of symmetries of these models, conditional to a series of…
We show how the families Seiberg-Witten invariants of a family of smooth $4$-manifolds can be recovered from the families Bauer-Furuta invariant via a cohomological formula. We use this formula to deduce several properties of the families…
The author has elsewhere given a complete classification of those compact oriented Einstein 4-manifolds on which the self-dual Weyl curvature is everywhere positive in the direction of some self-dual harmonic 2-form. In this article,…
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 $g$…