arXiv research

Functional AD for Weil algebra computations.

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.

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…

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…

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…

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 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…

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 …

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…

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}).…

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.

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…

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 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…

Higher-order tangent bundles have geometric structures compatible with their iterated bundle structure.

This paper describes grope and Whitney tower filtrations on the set of concordance classes of classical links in terms of class and order respectively. Using the tree-valued intersection theory of Whitney towers, the associated graded quotients are shown to be finitely generated abelian groups under a (surprisingly) we…

In this note we summarize our results from earlier work with the Monster Tower (A Monster Tower Approach to Goursat Multi-Flags). In particular, we give an overview of the problem of classifying the orbits within a tower of fibrations with fibers diffeomorphic to projective planes. Included in this note is one new resu…

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…

We show that the map on components from the space of classical long knots to the n-th stage of its Goodwillie-Weiss embedding calculus tower is a map of monoids whose target is an abelian group and which is invariant under clasper surgery. We deduce that this map on components is a finite type-(n-1) knot invariant. We …

We prove that if the fundamental group of an orientable finite volume hyperbolic 3-manifold has finite index in the reflection group of a right-angled ideal polyhedra in $\mathbb{H}^3$ then it has a co-final tower of finite sheeted covers with positive rank gradient. The manifolds we provide are also known to have co-f…

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

The study finds a limit on subgroup complexity in hyperbolic 3-manifold groups.

Constructs minimal surfaces by gluing saddle towers with Scherk ends.

The Monster tower, also known as the Semple tower, is a sequence of manifolds with distributions of interest to both differential and algebraic geometers. Each manifold is a projective bundle over the previous. Moreover, each level is a fiber compactified jet bundle equipped with an action of finite jets of the diffeom…

We prove that a Casson tower of height 4 contains a flat embedded disc bounded by the attaching circle, and we prove disc embedding results for height 2 and 3 Casson towers which are embedded into a 4-manifold, with some additional fundamental group assumptions. In the proofs we create a capped grope from a Casson towe…

The first part of this paper exposits a simple geometric description of the Kirby-Siebenmann invariant of a 4--manifold in terms of a quadratic refinement of its intersection form. This is the first in a sequence of higher-order intersection invariants of Whitney towers studied by the authors, particularly for the 4--b…

In this paper, we prove a conjecture of Friedl and Powell that their Casson-Gordon type invariant of 2-component link with linking number one is actually an obstruction to being height 3.5 Whitney tower/grope concordant to the Hopf Link. The proof employs the notion of solvable cobordism of 3-manifolds with boundary, w…

We relate certain abelian invariants of a knot, namely the Alexander polynomial, the Blanchfield form, and the Arf invariant, to intersection data of a Whitney tower in the 4-ball bounded by the knot. We also give a new 3-dimensional algorithm for computing these invariants.

Every compact aspherical Riemannian manifold admits a canonical series of orbibundle structures with infrasolv fibers which is called its infrasolv tower. The tower arises from the solvable radicals of isometry group actions on the universal covers. Its length and the geometry of its base measure the degree of continuo…

We show how to measure the failure of the Whitney trick in dimension 4 by constructing higher- order intersection invariants of Whitney towers built from iterated Whitney disks on immersed surfaces in 4-manifolds. For Whitney towers on immersed disks in the 4-ball, we identify some of these new invariants with previous…

Study structural invariants of Goursat distributions related to curve singularities.

Given k>=2, we construct a (2k-2)-parameter family of properly embedded minimal surfaces in H^2 x R invariant by a vertical translation T, called Saddle Towers, which have total intrinsic curvature 4 pi(1-k), genus zero and 2k vertical Scherk-type ends in the quotient by T. As limits of those Saddle Towers, we obtain J…

A geometric characterization of the Arf invariant of a knot in the 3-sphere is given in terms of two kinds of 4-dimensional bordisms, half-gropes and Whitney towers. These types of bordisms have associated complexities class and order which filter the condition of bordism by an embedded annulus, i.e. knot concordance, …

The n-solvable filtration $\{\mathcal{F}_n\}_{n=0}^\infty$ of the smooth knot concordance group (denoted by $\mathcal{C}$), due to Cochran-Orr-Teichner, has been instrumental in the study of knot concordance in recent years. Part of its significance is due to the fact that certain geometric characterizations of a knot …

We study the growth of the order of torsion subgroups of the homology in a tower of finite abelian coverings. In particular, we prove that it is exponential for when the tower converges to the maximal free abelian cover of a link complement when the first nonzero Alexander polynomial has positive logarithmic Mahler mea…

Study of small growth invariants in Goursat distributions.

We prove that if $M \longrightarrow P$ is a small cover of a compact right-angled hyperbolic polyhedron $P$ then $M$ admits a cofinal tower of finite sheeted covers with positive rank gradient. As a corollary, if $π_1(M)$ is commensurable with the reflection group of $P$, then $M$ admits a cofinal tower of finite sheet…