arXiv research

The Akbulut cork cannot transform all exotic 4-manifolds.

The paper proves trisection genus of Akbulut cork and constructs many corks with trisection genus 3.

Akbulut and Kirby conjectured that two knots with the same $0$-surgery are concordant. In this paper, we prove that if the slice-ribbon conjecture is true, then the modified Akbulut-Kirby's conjecture is false. We also give a fibered potential counterexample to the slice-ribbon conjecture.

We first construct a genus zero positive allowable Lefschetz fibration over the disk (a genus zero PALF for short) on the Akbulut cork and describe the monodromy as a positive factorization in the mapping class group of a surface of genus zero with five boundary components. We then construct genus zero PALFs on infinit…

We construct a genus zero PALF structure on each of plugs introduced by Akbulut and Yasui and describe the monodromy as a positive factorization in the mapping class group of a fiber. We also examine the monodromies of PALFs on a certain pair of compact Stein surfaces such that one is obtained by applying a plug twist …

Strong corks derived from previous work are proven.

Akbulut has recently shown that an infinite family of Cappell-Shaneson homotopy 4-spheres is diffeomorphic to the standard 4-sphere. In the present paper, a strictly larger family is shown to be standard by a simpler method. This new approach uses no Kirby calculus except through the relatively simple 1979 paper of Akb…

We show that an infinite sequence of homotopy 4-spheres constructed by Cappell-Shaneson are all diffeomorphic to S^4. This generalizes previous results of Akbulut-Kirby and Gompf.

Any bounding compact smooth manifold bounds a compact manifold with a spine consisting of transversely intersecting codimension one submanifolds. This paper provides details for a picture proof given in previous papers with S. Akbulut.

We give an algorithm for a surgery description of a $p$-fold cyclic branched cover of $B^3$ branched along a tangle. We generalize constructions of Montesinos and Akbulut-Kirby.

We call an integral homology sphere $\textit{non-trivially}$ bounds a rational homology ball if it is obstructed from bounding an integral homology ball. After Fintushel and Stern's well-known example $Σ(2,3,7)$, Akbulut and Larson recently provided the first infinite families of Brieskorn spheres non-trivially boundin…

Loi-Piergallini and Akbulut-Ozbagci showed that every compact Stein surface admits a Lefschetz fibration over the 2-disk with bounded fibers. In this note we give a more intrinsic alternative proof of this result.

We utilize the Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariant to detect the action of involutions on certain homology spheres that are surgeries on symmetric links, generalizing a previous result of Akbulut and Durusoy. Potentially this may be useful to detect different smooth structures on 4-manifolds by cork twisting operation.

New exotic 4-manifolds found with small trisection genus.

This is primarily an exposition, combining work of several authors (Curtis, Hsiang, Freedman, Stong, Matveyev, and Bizaca), of the proof that a smooth 5-dimensional h-cobordism between simply connected 4-manifolds is a product off of a contractible piece which itself is diffeomorphic to the 5-ball.

Operators on the ring of algebraically constructible functions are used to compute local obstructions for a four-dimensional semialgebraic set to be homeomorphic to a real algebraic set. The link operator and arithmetic operators yield $2^{43}-43$ independent characteristic numbers mod 2, which generalize the Akbulut-K…

A simple method constructs Lefschetz fibrations on compact Stein surfaces.

Recently Auckly-Kim-Melvin-Ruberman showed that for any finite subgroup G of SO(4) there exists a contractible 4-manifold with an effective G-action on its boundary so that the twists associated to the non-trivial elements of G do not extend to diffeomorphisms of the entire manifold. We use a Heegaard Floer theoretic a…

We consider a family of corks, denoted $W_n$, constructed by Akbulut and Yasui. Each cork gives rise to an exotic structure on a smooth 4-manifold via a twist $τ$ on its boundary $Σ_n = \partial W_n$. We compute the instanton Floer homology of $Σ_n$ and show that the map induced on the instanton Floer homology by $τ: Σ…

Standard trisection diagrams found for Mazur type 4-manifolds.

In this paper we find infinitely many Mazur type manifolds and corks with shadow complexity one among the 4-manifolds constructed from contractible special polyhedra having one true vertex by using the notion of Turaev's shadow. We also find such manifolds among 4-manifolds constructed from Bing's house. Our manifolds …

Fintushel-Stern's knot surgery gave many pairs of exotic manifolds, which are homeomorphic but non-diffeomorphic. We show that if an elliptic fibration has two parallel, oppositely oriented vanishing circles (for example $S^2\times S^2$ or Matsumoto's $S^4$), then the knot surgery gives rise to standard manifolds. The …

We show that, for each integer n, there exist infinitely many pairs of n-framed knots representing homeomorphic but non-diffeomorphic (Stein) 4-manifolds, which are the simplest possible exotic 4-manifolds regarding handlebody structures. To produce these examples, we introduce a new description of cork twists and util…

4-manifolds can be exotic after connected sum with S^2 x S^2.

The algorithm given by Akbulut-Ozbagci constructs an explicit open book decomposition on a contact three-manifold described by a contact surgery on a link in the three-sphere. In this article, we will improve this algorithm by using Giroux's contact cell decomposition process. Our algorithm is more economical on choosi…

In this paper, we investigate existence of inequivalent smooth structures on closed smooth non-orientable 4-manifolds building upon results of Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson, Fintushel-Stern, Gompf, and Stolz. We add to the number of known constructions and provide new examples of exotic manifolds that are obtained as an ap…

Study obstructs symplectic structures on Mazur manifolds.

Fast and efficient homology algorithms are in demand in the applied sciences for analyzing solid materials and proteins, processing digital imaging data, or pattern classification among others. Recent advances employ discrete Morse theory as a preprocessor. Research in this area has lead to the need to find complicated…

While topologists have had possession of possible counterexamples to the smooth 4-dimensional Poincaré conjecture (SPC4) for over 30 years, until recently no invariant has existed which could potentially distinguish these examples from the standard 4-sphere. Rasmussen's s-invariant, a slice obstruction within the gener…

In this paper, we study compact convex Lefschetz fibrations on compact convex symplectic manifolds (i.e., Liouville domains) of dimension $2n+2$ which are introduced by Seidel and later also studied by McLean. By a result of Akbulut-Arikan, the open book on $\partial W$, which we call \emph{convex open book}, induced b…

New 4-manifolds with exotic diffeomorphisms found.

New research finds 145 infinite families of CS spheres are standard.

All link types arise from semiholomorphic polynomials.

Using the Cartan-Kahler theory, and results on real algebraic structures, we prove two embedding theorems. First, the interior of a smooth, compact 3-manifold may be isometrically embedded into a G_2-manifold as an associative submanifold. Second, the interior of a smooth, compact 4-manifold K, whose double has a trivi…

One can define what it means for a compact manifold with corners to be a "contractible manifold with contractible faces." Two combinatorially equivalent, contractible manifolds with contractible faces are diffeomorphic if and only if their 4-dimensional faces are diffeomorphic. It follows that two simple convex polytop…

Much work has been done on the existence and uniqueness of broken Lefschetz fibrations such as those by Auroux et al., Gay and Kirby, Lekili, Akbulut and Karakurt, Baykur, and Williams, but there has been a lack of explicit examples. A theorem of Gay and Kirby suggests the existence of a broken Lefschetz fibration of S…

3-dimensional Harvey Lawson submanifolds were introduced in an earlier paper by Akbulut-Salur, as examples of Lagrangian-type manifolds inside G2 manifold. In this paper, we first show that the space of deformations of a smooth, compact, orientable Harvey-Lawson submanifold HL in a G2 manifold M can be identified with …

Article generalizes open book construction for 5D contact pairs.

Here we prove that up to diffeomorphism every compact Stein manifold W of dimension 2n+2>4 admits a Lefschetz fibration over the two-disk with Stein regular fibers, such that the monodromy of the fibration is a symplectomorphism induced by compositions of right-handed Dehn twists along embedded Lagrangian n-spheres on …

New 4-manifold examples show necessary conditions for 4D Light Bulb Theorem.

The author recently proved the existence of an infinite order cork: a compact, contractible submanifold $C$ of a 4-manifold and an infinite order diffeomorphism $f$ of $\partial C$ such that cutting out $C$ and regluing it by distinct powers of $f$ yields pairwise nondiffeomorphic manifolds. The present paper exhibits …

Study shows challenges in reinforcement learning math problems, proposing enhancements and a hardness measure.

The paper tackles deeply slice knots via immersed curves.

A simple characterization is given of open subsets of a complex surface that smoothly perturb to Stein open subsets. As applications, complex 2-space C^2 contains domains of holomorphy (Stein open subsets) that are exotic R^4's, and others homotopy equivalent to the 2-sphere but cut out by smooth, compact 3-manifolds. …

It is known that there is a unique concordance class in the free homotopy class of $S^1\times pt \subset S^1 \times S^2$. The constructive proof of this fact is given by the second author. It turns out that all the concordances in this construction are invertible. The knots $K\subset S^{1}\times S^{2}$ with hyperbolic …

The paper constructs new rational homology 3-spheres bounding rational homology 4-balls.

Khovanov homology distinguishes exotic 4-manifolds.

By using the relation between foliations and exotic R^4, orbifold $K$-theory deformed by a gerbe can be interpreted as coming from the change in the smoothness of R^4. We give various interpretations of integral 3-rd cohomology classes on S^3 and discuss the difference between large and small exotic R^4. Then we show t…