arXiv research

Study L^2-Betti numbers in prime characteristic for a conjecture about 2-complex towers.

We show that Tim Cochran's invariants $β^i(L)$ of a $2$-component link $L$ in the $3$--sphere can be computed as intersection invariants of certain 2-complexes in the $4$--ball with boundary $L$. These 2-complexes are special types of twisted Whitney towers, which we call {\em Cochran towers}, and which exhibit a new p…

Many open problems and important theorems in low-dimensional topology have been formulated as statements about certain 2--complexes called gropes. This paper describes a precise correspondence between embedded gropes in 4--manifolds and the failure of the Whitney move in terms of iterated `towers' of Whitney disks. The…

This paper describes the relationship between the first non-vanishing Milnor invariants of a classical link and the intersection invariant of a twisted Whitney tower. This is a certain 2-complex in the 4-ball, built from immersed disks bounded by the given link in the 3-sphere together with finitely many `layers' of Wh…

Paper confirms Whitehead's conjecture for aspherical 2-complexes.

Finite simply connected 2-complexes with nonpositive planar curvature are collapsible.

Study of knots and links in 2-complexes, defining linking numbers and polynomials.

A 2-complex requires at least 12 colours to avoid edge conflicts.

We study random 2-dimensional complexes in the Linial - Meshulam model and find torsion in their fundamental groups at various regimes. We find a simple algorithmically testable criterion for a subcomplex of a random 2-complex to be aspherical; this implies that any aspherical subcomplex of a random 2-complex satisfies…

New infinite family of 2-complexes intrinsically linked in 4D.

Proves universal pairing result for 2-complexes, showing lack of positivity.

In earlier work, we introduced the `Monster tower', a tower of fibrations associated to planar curves. We constructed an algorithm for classifying its points with respect to the equivalence relation generated by the action of the contact pseudogroup on the tower. Here, we construct the analogous tower for curves in $n$…

The monster tower is a tower of spaces over a specified base; each space in the tower is a parameter space for curvilinear data up to a specified order. We describe and analyze a natural stratification of these spaces.

Notes on Whitney towers in 4-manifolds, focusing on local surface manipulations and invariants.

Study 2-complexes' homology properties and torsion growth.

Nonpositive towers property in 3-manifolds spines.

We study the structure of the exteriors of gropes and Whitney towers in dimension 4, focusing on their fundamental groups. In particular we introduce a notion of unknottedness of gropes and Whitney towers in the 4-sphere. We prove that various modifications of gropes and Whitney towers preserve the unknottedness and do…

3D Schoenflies theorem for simply-connected 2-complexes.

We investigate the Tits boundary of locally compact CAT(0) 2-complexes. In particular we show that away from the endpoints, a geodesic segment in the Tits boundary is the ideal boundary of an isometrically embedded Euclidean sector. As applications, we provide sufficient conditions for two points in the Tits boundary t…

We study the asymptotic growth of Betti numbers in tower of finite covers and provide simple proofs of approximation results, which were previously obtained by Calegari-Emerton, in the generality of arbitrary p-adic analytic towers of covers. Further, we also obtain partial results about arbitrary pro-$p$ towers.

A complex projective tower or simply a $\mathbb CP$-tower is an iterated complex projective fibrations starting from a point. In this paper we classify all 6-dimensional $\mathbb CP$-towers up to diffeomorphism, and as a consequence, we show that all such manifolds are cohomologically rigid, i.e., they are completely d…

New rational curvature measures for 2-complexes.

The paper shows examples of 2-complexes that can't be embedded in R^4, hiding obstructions in higher Milnor invariants.

We consider here the problem of classifying orbits of an action of the dif- feomorphism group of 3-space on a tower of fibrations with P2-fibers that generalize the Monster Tower due to Montgomery and Zhitomirskii. As a corollary we give the first steps towards the problem of classifying Goursat 2-flags of small length…

We consider computational complexity of problems related to the fundamental group and the first homology group of (embeddable) $2$-complexes. We show, as an extension of an earlier work, that computing first homology of $2$-complexes is equivalent in computational complexity to matrix diagonalization. That is, the usua…

In this paper we construct, for n >= 2, arbitrarily large families of infinite towers of compact, orientable Riemannian n-manifolds which are isospectral but not isometric at each stage. In dimensions two and three, the towers produced consist of hyperbolic 2-manifolds and hyperbolic 3-manifolds, and in these cases we …

We prove a finiteness result for the systolic area of groups, answering a question of M. Gromov. Namely, we show that there are only finitely many possible unfree factors of fundamental groups of~2-complexes whose systolic area is uniformly bounded. Furthermore, we prove a uniform systolic inequality for all 2-complexe…

We obtain several results about stability of the Bergman kernel on a tower of coverings on complex manifolds. An effective version of Rhodes' result is given for a tower of coverings on a compact Riemann surface of genus greater than or equal to 2. Stability of the Bergman kernel is established for towers of coverings …

We describe Taylor towers for spaces of knots arising from Goodwillie-Weiss calculus of the embedding functor and extend the configuration space integrals of Bott and Taubes from spaces of knots to the stages of the towers. We show that certain combinations of integrals, indexed by trivalent diagrams, yield cohomology …

The paper shows geometric realisation over specific groups and knots.

Link concordance and Whitney towers linked to Milnor invariants.

We introduce a notion of symmetric Whitney tower cobordism between bordered 3-manifolds, aiming at the study of homology cobordism and link concordance. It is motivated by the symmetric Whitney tower approach to slicing knots and links initiated by Cochran, Orr, and Teichner. We give amenable Cheeger-Gromov rho-invaria…

The study finds stably free modules and distinct 2-complexes for large ranks.

Starting from works by Scherk (1835) and by Enneper-Weierstraß\ (1863), new minimal surfaces with Scherk ends were found only in 1988 by Karcher (see \cite{Karcher1,Karcher}). In the singly periodic case, Karcher's examples of positive genera had been unique until Traizet obtained new ones in 1996 (see \cite{Traizet}).…

A complex disproves a curvature property.

We introduce a norm on the real 1-cohomology of finite 2-complexes determined by the Euler characteristics of graphs on these complexes. We also introduce twisted Alexander-Fox polynomials of groups and show that they give rise to norms on the real 1-cohomology of groups. Our main theorem states that for a finite 2-com…

The first part of this paper completes the classification of Whitney towers in the 4-ball that was started in three related papers. We provide an algebraic framework allowing the computations of the graded groups associated to geometric filtrations of classical link concordance by order n (twisted) Whitney towers in th…

Researchers create new triply periodic minimal surfaces by gluing saddle towers.

Rationality proved for curvature invariants of 2-complexes.

We present complete classifications of links in the 3-sphere modulo framed and twisted Whitney towers in a rational homology 4-ball. This provides a geometric characterization of the vanishing of the Milnor invariants of links in terms of Whitney towers. Our result also says that the higher order Arf invariants, which …

In this note we show that the configuration spaces of the kinematic system constructed in [4] and [12] gives rise to a natural tower of sphere bundles. Moreover, we prove that, each tower of projective bundles associated to special multi- flags (cf [1], [13], [2], [3]), we can associate such a tower of sphere bundles w…

This paper computes Whitney tower filtrations of classical links. Whitney towers consist of iterated stages of Whitney disks and allow a tree-valued intersection theory, showing that the associated graded quotients of the filtration are finitely generated abelian groups. Twisted Whitney towers are studied and a new qua…

Let $X$ be a contractible $2$-complex which is a union of two contractible subcomplexes $Y$ and $Z.$ Is the intersection $Y\cap Z$ contractible as well? In this note, we prove that the inclusion-induced map $π_{1}(Y\cap Z)\rightarrow π_{1}(Z)$ is injective if $Y$ is $π_{1}$-injective subcomplex in a locally CAT(0) 2-co…

A Bott tower is the total space of a tower of fibre bundles with base CP^1 and fibres CP^1. Every Bott tower of height n is a smooth projective toric variety whose moment polytope is combinatorially equivalent to an n-cube. A circle action is semifree if it is free on the complement to fixed points. We show that a (qua…

We show that there can be no algorithm to decide whether infinite recursively described acyclic aspherical 2-complexes are contractible. We construct such a complex that is contractible if and only if the Collatz conjecture holds.

We further study the incidence relations that arise from the various subtowers, known as Baby Monster, which exist within the $\mathbb{R}^{3}$-Monster Tower. This allows us to complete the $RVT$ class spelling rules. We also present a method of calculating the various Baby Monster that appear within the Monster Tower.

Study of embedding spaces using homotopy theory and operads.

This paper investigates the space of codimension zero embeddings of a Poincare duality space in a disk. One of our main results exhibits a tower that interpolates from the space of Poincare immersions to a certain space of "unlinked" Poincare embeddings. The layers of this tower are described in terms of the coefficien…