Related papers: The E_8-manifold, singular fibers and handlebody d…

We study simple wrinkled fibrations, a variation of the simplified purely wrinkled fibrations introduced by Williams, and their combinatorial description in terms of surface diagrams. We show that simple wrinkled fibrations induce handle…

We introduce a new type of singularity for smooth maps from $4$-manifolds to surfaces, called an $M$-singularity, whose critical locus is a circle contained in a single fiber. We show that the monodromy around an $M$-singularity is a…

Singular fibrations generalize achiral Lefschetz fibrations of 4-manifolds over surfaces while sharing some of their properties. For instance, relatively minimal singular fibrations are determined by their monodromy. We explain how to…

We show that only finitely many links in a closed 3-manifold share the same complement, up to twists along discs and annuli. Using the same techniques, we prove that by adding 2-handles on the same link we get only finitely many smooth…

This note presents the handlebody argument for modifying achiral Lefschetz singularities into broken Lefschetz fibrations, yielding a handlebody proof of the existence of broken Lefschetz fibrations on arbitrary closed smooth oriented…

We show that, given $d \geq 4$ and two closed connected oriented PL $4$-manifolds $M$ and $N$ such that $N$ has a handle decomposition with no $1$- and $3$-handles, there exists a $d$-fold simple branched covering $p \colon M \darrow{d} N$…

Shapes of four dimensional spaces can be studied effectively via maps to standard surfaces. We explain, and illustrate by quintessential examples, how to simplify such generic maps on 4-manifolds topologically, in order to derive simple…

We introduce the $2$-nodal spherical deformation of certain singular fibers of genus $2$ fibrations, and use such deformations to construct various examples of simply connected minimal symplectic $4$-manifolds with small topology. More…

The link between Frobenius manifolds and singularity theory is well known, with the simplest examples coming from the simple hypersurface singularities. Associated with any such manifold is a function known as the $G$-function. This plays a…

We establish a braid of interlocking exact sequences containing the group of homotopy self-equivalences of a smooth or topological 4-manifold. The braid is computed for manifolds whose fundamental group is finite of odd order.

We realize higher-form symmetries in F-theory compactifications on non-compact elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds. Central to this endeavour is the topology of the boundary of the non-compact elliptic fibration, as well as the…

Given some type of fibration on a 4-manifold $X$ with a torus regular fiber $T$, we may produce a new 4-manifold $X_T$ by performing torus surgery on $T$. There is a natural way to extend the fibration to $X_T$, but a multiple fiber…

In the author's earlier work there appeared a new way to specify any smooth closed 4-manifold by a surface diagram, which consists of an orientable surface decorated with simple closed curves. These curves are cyclically indexed, and each…

Work of numerous authors has shown that any smooth, orientable, closed 4-manifold may be described as a loop of Morse functions on a surface, a loop in the cut complex, a loop in the pants complex, or as a multisection. In this paper, we…

Let $X$ be an oriented 4-manifold which does not have simple SW-type, for example a blow-up of a rational or ruled surface. We show that any two cohomologous and deformation equivalent symplectic forms on $X$ are isotopic. This implies that…

Our main result is a generalization of Cappell's 5-dimensional splitting theorem. As an application, we analyze, up to internal s-cobordism, the smoothable splitting and fibering problems for certain 5-manifolds mapping to the circle. For…

We study the geometry of elliptic fibrations satisfying the conditions of Step 8 of Tate's algorithm. We call such geometries F$_4$-models, as the dual graph of their special fiber is the twisted affine Dynkin diagram…

The topology of broken Lefschetz fibrations is studied by means of handle decompositions. We consider a slight generalization of round handles, and describe the handle diagrams for all that appear in dimension four. We establish simplified…

It is well known that elliptic operators on a smooth compact manifold are classified by K-homology. We prove that a similar classification is also valid for manifolds with simplest singularities: isolated conical points and fibered…

We define a monodromy homomorphism for irreducible families of regular elliptic fibrations which takes values in the mapping class group of a punctured sphere. We compute the monodromy for elliptic fibrations only which contain no singular…