arXiv research

New bounds and examples for sphere unknotting numbers.

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

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 …

Geometric trick simplifies link homotopy and concordance.

It is shown that an equivariant Lagrangian sphere with a positivity condition on its Ricci curvature develops a type-II singularity under the Lagrangian mean curvature flow that rescales to the product of a grim reaper with a flat Lagrangian subspace. In particular this result applies to the Whitney spheres.

We study the evolution of the Whitney sphere along the Lagrangian mean curvature flow. We show that equivariant Lagrangian spheres in $\mathbb{C}^n$ satisfying mild geometric assumptions collapse to a point in finite time and the tangent flows converge to a Lagrangian plane with multiplicity two.

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

Extends rigidity results for Whitney spheres in higher dimensions.

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

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 …

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…

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…

Study shows knots in homology spheres can be topologically equivalent to those in $S^3$.

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 …

Complete obstruction found for 2-spheres in 5-manifolds to be isotopic.

We continue to develop an obstruction theory for embedding 2-spheres into 4-manifolds in terms of Whitney towers. The proposed intersection invariants take values in certain graded abelian groups generated by labelled trivalent trees, and with relations well known from the 3-dimensional theory of finite type invariants…

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 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…

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…

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 paper finds Riemannian metric representatives for Stiefel-Whitney classes.

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 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…

It is known that if any prime power branched cyclic cover of a knot in the 3-sphere is a homology sphere, then the knot has vanishing Casson-Gordon invariants. We construct infinitely many examples of (topologically) non-slice knots in the 3-sphere whose prime power branched cyclic covers are homology spheres. We show …

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.

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

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

Bridge trisections and knotted surfaces connected via tri-plane diagrams.

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 this short note, we compare the combinatorial sign assignment of Manolescu, Ozsvath, Szabo and Thurston for grid homology of knots and links in 3-sphere with the sign assignment coming from a coherent system of orientations on Whitney disks. Although these constructions produce different signs, a small modification …

We prove a Theorem on homotheties between two given tangent sphere bundles $S_rM$ of a Riemannian manifold $M,g$ of $\dim\geq 3$, assuming different variable radius functions $r$ and weighted Sasaki metrics induced by the conformal class of $g$. New examples are shown of manifolds with constant positive or with constan…

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…

Explains examples of Lagrangian flow with circle symmetry.

In this note we show that every (real or complex) vector bundle over a compact rank one symmetric space carries, after taking the Whitney sum with a trivial bundle of sufficiently large rank, a metric with nonnegative sectional curvature. We also examine the case of complex vector bundles over other manifolds, and give…

Extends functions on symmetric spaces to analytic functions.

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…

Characterizes Whitney forms on simplices and proves their uniqueness.

Study curves on a Whitney umbrella using geometric invariants.

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.

An obstruction theory for representing homotopy classes of surfaces in 4-manifolds by immersions with pairwise disjoint images is developed, using the theory of non-repeating Whitney towers. The accompanying higher-order intersection invariants provide a geometric generalization of Milnor's link-homotopy invariants, an…