arXiv research

Characterizes Whitney forms on simplices and proves their uniqueness.

The paper characterizes Whitney and contact Whitney spheres in complex and Sasakian space forms.

New forms generalize Whitney forms with rational coefficients for numerical analysis.

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…

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…

Let $X$ be a real-analytic manifold and $g\colon X\to{\mathbf R}^n$ a proper triangulable subanalytic map. Given a subanalytic $r$-form $ω$ on $X$ whose pull-back to every non singular fiber of $g$ is exact, we show tha $ω$ has a relative primitive: there is a subanalytic $(r-1)$-form $Ω$ such that $dgΛ(ω-dΩ)=0$. The p…

We establish the equivalence of the Tuynman midpoint area formula for a spherical triangle to the classical area formulas of Euler and of Cagnoli. The derivation also yields a variant of the Cagnoli formula in terms of the medial triangle. We introduce the three barycentric coordinates of a point within the spherical t…

We compute the group of link homotopy classes of link maps of two 2-spheres into 4-space. It turns out to be free abelian, generated by geometric constructions applied to the Fenn-Rolfsen link map and detected by two self-intersection invariants introduced by Paul Kirk in this setting. As a corollary, we show that any …

The paper finds Riemannian metric representatives for Stiefel-Whitney classes.

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.

Study geometric properties of S1 singularities and their deformations.

Paper calculates homology and intersection form of trisected 4-manifolds with boundary.

For an immersed Lagrangian submanifold, let $\check{A}$ be the Lagrangian trace-free second fundamental form. In this note we consider the equation $\nabla^*T=0$ on Lagrangian surfaces immersed in $\mathbb{C}^2$, where $T=-2\nabla^*(\check{A}\lrcornerω)$, and we prove a gap theorem for the Whitney sphere as a solution …

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…

Extends rigidity results for Whitney spheres in higher dimensions.

The study of Seifert linking forms for punctured n-manifolds in (2n-1)-space.

Integrates rough geometric forms on manifolds.

Non-trivial Clifford bundle from loop space tangent bundle.

Stiefel-Whitney classes of moment-angle manifolds are trivial.

A criterion for Whitney disks connects intersections in 3-manifold homology.

In this paper we show that certain generalizations of the $C^r$-Whitney topology, which include the Hölder-Whitney and Sobolev-Whitney topologies on smooth manifolds, satisfy the Baire property, to wit, the countable intersection of open and dense sets is dense.

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

Study on curves around a Whitney umbrella focusing on geodesic and normal curvatures.

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…

Using tools and results from geometric measure theory, we give a simple new proof of the main result (Theorem 1.3) in K. Kondo and M. Tanaka, Approximation of Lipschitz Maps via Immersions and Differentiable Exotic Sphere Theorems, \textit{Nonlinear Anal.} \textbf{155} (2017), 219--249, as well as the converse statemen…

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…

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…

In 1976, Dodziuk and Patodi employed Whitney forms to define a combinatorial codifferential operator on cochains, and they raised the question whether it is consistent in the sense that for a smooth enough differential form the combinatorial codifferential of the associated cochain converges to the exterior codifferent…

We classify the Lagrangian orientable surfaces in complex space forms with the property that the ellipse of curvature is always a circle. As a consequence, we obtain new characterizations of the Clifford torus of the complex projective plane and of the Whitney spheres in the complex projective, complex Euclidean and co…

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…

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…

Geometric trick simplifies link homotopy and concordance.

Extends functions on symmetric spaces to analytic functions.

Let M be a manifold, possibly with boundary. We show that the deRham differential from k-forms to exact (k+1)-forms has a continuous right inverse when both spaces are given the weak Whitney topology. This antidifferential operator is given a fairly explicit formula depending on the choice of a suitable good cover of M…

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 …

Study curves on a Whitney umbrella using geometric invariants.

A 4-manifold is parallelizable if its Stiefel-Whitney and Pontryagin classes vanish.

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…

We study the singularities of the members of the family of height functions on Whitney umbrellas, which is also known as cross-caps, and show that the family of the height functions is a versal unfolding. Moreover, we study local intersections of a Whitney umbrella with a hyperplane through its singular point.

New theorem shows embedding restrictions for manifold skeletons.

Triple-point Whitney trick classifies ornaments of 3-manifolds.

We give a geometric proof of existence of Whitney stratifications of definable sets in o-minimal structures.

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…

Study shows non-vanishing Stiefel-Whitney classes and absence of spin^C structures in certain hyperbolic manifolds.

New bounds and examples for sphere unknotting numbers.

Researchers find examples of real Bott manifolds with nonzero dual Stiefel-Whitney class wbar_{n-ahat(n)} for all n nonzero mod 4.

3D analog of Whitney's planarity criterion for 2-complexes.