arXiv research

The paper extends Gompf's invariant to all compact 3-manifolds and studies its variations.

New method produces corks using Heegaard Floer homology.

Legendrian surgery describes canonical contact structures and calculates Gompf's θ-invariant.

The above named paper has been withdrawn. A colleague has observed a gap in the proof of isotopy invariance, which can be repaired by reducing the coefficients (which lie in (1/6)Z) of the antisymmetric kanji with chords incident with more than one component modulo 8Z. An analogous issue arises in considering the effec…

We define a diffeomorphism invariant of smooth 4-manifolds which we can estimate for many smoothings of R^4 and other smooth 4-manifolds. Using this invariant we can show that uncountably many smoothings of R^4 support no Stein structure. (Gompf has constructed uncountably many smoothings of R^4 which do support Stein …

Combings of oriented compact 3-manifolds are homotopy classes of nowhere zero vector fields in these manifolds. A first known invariant of a combing is its Euler class, that is the Euler class of the normal bundle to a combing representative in the tangent bundle of the 3-manifold $M$. It only depends on the Spin$^c$-s…

Developed Gompf connected sum for orbifolds, constructing symplectic and K-contact manifolds.

Study confirms conjecture linking 4-spheres, finds new spheres.

Study K-theory of Etesi $C^*$-algebras to understand smooth manifolds.

In this note we show that there are 4-manifolds not containing Gompf nucleus $N_2$; in this way we answer Problem 4.98 of Kirby's problem list in the negative.

Research confirms Gompf's conjecture for some Brieskorn spheres and finds a new 4-manifold without Stein structure.

We make use of $\mathcal{F}$-structures and technology developed by Paternain - Petean to compute minimal entropy, minimal volume, and Yamabe invariant of symplectic 4-manifolds, as well as to study their collapse with sectional curvature bounded from below. À la Gompf, we show that these invariants vanish on symplecti…

Study contact structures on projective spaces, proving infinite non-isotopic structures.

Every finitely presented group is the fundamental group of the total space of a Lefschetz fibration. This follows from results of Gompf and Donaldson, and was also proved by Amoros-Bogomolov-Katzarkov-Pantev. We give another proof by providing the monodromy explicitly. We then define the genus of a finitely presented g…

The invariant $Θ$ is an invariant of rational homology 3-spheres $M$ equipped with a combing $X$ over the complement of a point. It is related to the Casson-Walker invariant $λ$ by the formula $Θ(M,X)=6λ(M)+p_1(X)/4$, where $p_1$ is an invariant of combings that is simply related to a Gompf invariant. In [arXiv:1209.32…

Infinite order corks are described with detailed handle decompositions.

Stein and Weinstein structures are described for disk cotangent bundles of surfaces.

The paper explores methods to construct knots with diffeomorphic $0$-traces.

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.

New corks constructed for infinite nonabelian groups, answering a question.

Characterizes symplectic rational homology ball fillings of Seifert fibered spaces.

We introduce a new generalization of Gompf nuclei and give applications. We construct infinitely many exotic smooth structures for a large class of compact 4-manifolds with boundary, regarding topological invariants. We prove that a large class of closed 3-manifolds (including disjoint unions of Stein fillable 3-manifo…

We prove that the rational blowdown, a surgery on smooth 4-manifolds introduced by Fintushel and Stern, can be performed in the symplectic category. As a consequence, interesting families of smooth 4-manifolds, including the exotic $K3$ surfaces of Gompf and Mrowka, admit symplectic structures.

Let X be a 4-manifold with contact boundary. We prove that the monopole invariants of X introduced by Kronheimer and Mrowka vanish under the following assumptions: (i) a connected component of the boundary of X carries a metric with positive scalar curvature and (ii) either b_2^+(X)>0 or the boundary of X is disconnect…

We show that there is a complex structure on the symplectic 4-manifold $W_{4, k}$ obtained from the elliptic surface E(4) by rationally blowing down $k$ sections for $2\le k\le 9$. And we interpret it via ${\mathbb Q}$-Gorenstein smoothing. This answers affirmatively to a question raised by R. Gompf.

In this paper, we construct simply connected symplectic Calabi-Yau 6-manifolds by applying Gompf's symplectic fiber sum operation along $T^4$. Using our construction, we also produce symplectic non-Kähler Calabi-Yau 6-manifolds with fundamental group $\Z$. In this paper, we also produce the first examples of simply con…

Study semi-fibered concordance of links using virtual covers.

Gluck twisting certain knots results in standard 4-spheres.

The paper proves the existence of Ricci-flat metrics on certain exotic 4-manifolds.

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…

Elliptic surfaces without 1-handles proven for specific cases.

The paper constructs non-smoothable actions on spin 4-manifolds.

We show that any 4-manifold, after surgery on a curve, admits an achiral Lefschetz fibration. In particular, we show that the connected sum of any simply connected 4-manifold with a 2-sphere bundle over the 2-sphere will admit an achiral Lefschetz fibration. We also show these surgered manifolds admit near-symplectic s…

Earlier work with Robert Gompf and Abigail Thompson classified, via a natural slope indexed by the rationals, all two-component links which contain the square knot and from which $(S^1 \times S^2) \# (S^1 \times S^2)$ can be obtained by surgery. It was argued that a certain family $L_n$ of such links probably contradic…

Extending work of Chen, we prove the Weinstein conjecture in dimension three for strongly fillable contact structures with either non-vanishing first Chern class or with strong and exact filling having non-trivial canonical bundle. This implies the Weinstein conjecture for certain Stein fillable contact structures obta…

We propose and analyze a structure with which to organize the difference between a knot in the 3-sphere bounding a topologically embedded 2-disk in the 4-ball and it bounding a smoothly embedded disk. The n-solvable filtration of the topological knot concordance group, due to Cochran-Orr-Teichner, may be complete in th…

Study Weinstein structures on toric divisors' complements.

We prove generic fibre of Painlevé moduli spaces are Weinstein handlebodies.

The study connects Dehn surgeries on links to trisections of 4-manifolds.

New method constructs stable generalized complex structures.

Paper explores constructing knots with identical traces using specific operations.

Constructs exotic proper 2-knots from open 2-handles.

The paper connects fibrations to generalized complex structures in semi-toric geometry.

New contact Kirby moves complete the set for contact surgery diagrams.

New stable exotic 4-manifolds found with specific topological properties.

Let X_1, X_2 be symplectic 4-manifolds containing symplectic surfaces F_1,F_2 of identical positive genus and opposite squares. Let Z denote the symplectic sum of X_1 and X_2 along the F_k. Using relative Gromov--Witten theory, we determine precisely when the symplectic 4-manifold Z is minimal (i.e., cannot be blown do…

The study confirms the non-existence of rational homology ball symplectic fillings for certain Brieskorn spheres.

The paper verifies stable handleslide triviality of some R-links and shows many are stably equivalent.