arXiv research

Criterion found for blowing down in 6D symplectic geometry.

We compare the star surgery operations introduced in [KS] to the generalized rational blow-down. We show that star surgery shares the properties that make rational blow-down useful for constructions of small exotic symplectic 4-manifolds. Then we show that star surgery operations provide a strictly more general class o…

The blow-down map is studied in Lie algebroid cohomology.

New surfaces with conjugate points have global blow-down maps in their TT spaces.

Study ancient solutions on noncompact steady Ricci solitons, proving types of ancient solutions.

We verify that the rational blow-down schemes along certain Seifert fibered 3-manifolds found by the second author, Szabo and Wahl are, in fact, symplectic operations.

Motivated by a result of L.P. Roberts on rational blow-downs in Heegaard-Floer homology, we study such operations along 3-manifolds that arise as branched double covers of $S^{3}$ along several non-alternating, slice knots.

We construct smooth 4-manifolds homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to $CP^2#k\bar{CP^2},k \in {6,7,8,9}$, using the technique of rational blow-down along Wahl type plumbing trees of spheres.

Due to a significant error in the main result (pointed out by J. Wahl), the paper has been withdrawn by the authors. A corrected and expanded version is 'Rational blow-downs and smoothings of surface singularities' by A. Stipsicz, Z. Szabo and J. Wahl.

The paper describes how known results in Heegaard-Floer homology apply to all known examples of rational blow-downs, and provides several new four dimensional pieces which could be exchanged while preserving some of the Ozsváth-Szabó four manifold invariants, when one of these pieces is found embedded in a smooth four …

Ancient solutions of Lagrangian mean curvature flow in C^n naturally arise as Type II blow-ups. In this extended note we give structural and classification results for such ancient solutions in terms of their blow-down and, motivated by the Thomas-Yau Conjecture, focus on the almost calibrated case. In particular, we c…

We construct a Kirby diagram of the rational homology ball used in "generalized rational blow-down" developed by Jongil Park. The diagram consists of a dotted circle and a torus knot. The link is simpler, but the parameters are a little complicate. Euclidean Algorithm is used three times in the construction and the pro…

The study examines gradient Ricci solitons with nonnegative curvature, proving properties of their blow-downs.

In this paper we give a necessary combinatorial condition for a negative--definite plumbing tree to be suitable for rational blow--down, or to be the graph of a complex surface singularity which admits a rational homology disk smoothing. New examples of surface singularities with rational homology disk smoothings are a…

The article resolves complex structures in transport twistor spaces, proving a Newlander-Nirenberg theorem.

The paper studies a 1D diffusion equation with nonlinear Robin boundary conditions and finds conditions for global and finite time blow-up or blow-down.

The paper proves unique blow-down for critical points of a Yang-Mills-Higgs functional.

Ancient Ricci flows on compact spaces converge to solitons.

Suppose that $C=(C_1,..., C_m)$ is a configuration of 2-dimensional symplectic submanifolds in a symplectic 4-manifold $(X,ω)$ with connected, negative definite intersection graph $Γ_C$. We show that by replacing an appropriate neighborhood of $\cup C_i$ with a smoothing $W_S$ of a normal surface singularity $(S, 0)$ w…

Paper finds formulas for minimizing perimeter in special spaces, proving key dimensions and existence.

We prove a gluing formula for Seiberg--Witten invariants which describes in particular the behaviour of the invariant under blow-up and rational blow-down.

The study of symplectic fillings for rational cuspidal curves.

We show that for an immortal homogeneous Ricci flow solution any sequence of parabolic blow-downs subconverges to a homogeneous expanding Ricci soliton. This is established by constructing a new Lyapunov function based on curvature estimates which come from real geometric invariant theory.

In this paper we study the classification of ancient convex solutions to the mean curvature flow in $\R^{n+1}$. An open problem related to the classification of type II singularities is whether a convex translating solution is $k$-rotationally symmetric for some integer $2\le k\le n$, namely whether its level set is a …

We exhibit a finite set of local moves that connect any two surgery presentations of the same 3-manifold via framed links in the three-sphere. The moves are handle-slides and blow-downs/ups of a particular simple kind.

In this paper we develop a Morse-like theory in order to decompose birational maps and morphisms of smooth projective varieties defined over a field of characteristic zero into more elementary steps which are locally étale isomorphic to equivariant flips, blow-ups and blow-downs of toric varieties. A crucial role in th…

Fintushel and Stern defined the rational blow-down construction [FS] for smooth 4-manifolds, where a linear plumbing configuration of spheres $C_n$ is replaced with a rational homology ball $B_n$, $n \geq 2$. Subsequently, Symington [Sy] defined this procedure in the symplectic category, where a symplectic $C_n$ (given…

As the sequel to [5, 7], we construct a simply connected minimal complex surface of general type with p_g = 0 and K^2 = 4 by using a rational blow-down surgery and Q-Gorenstein smoothing theory.

In this article we prove that Fintushel-Stern's construction of Horikawa surface, which is obtained from an elliptic surface via a rational blow-down surgery in smooth category, can be performed in complex category. The main technique involved is Q-Gorenstein smoothings.

We study lens space surgeries along two different families of 2-component links, denoted by $A_{m,n}$ and $B_{p,q}$, related with the rational homology 4-ball used in J.\ Park's (generalized) rational blow down. We determine which coefficient $r$ of the knotted component of the link yields a lens space by Dehn surgery.…

In this paper, we study the large time behavior of the heat kernel on complete Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature, which was studied by P. Li with additional maximum volume growth assumption. Following Y. Ding's original strategy, by blowing down the metric, using Cheeger and Colding's theory about l…

Study symplectic 4-orbifolds with vanishing canonical class, finding new structures and resolutions.

We prove that every minimal symplectic filling of the link of a quotient surface singularity can be obtained from its minimal resolution by applying a sequence of rational blow-downs and symplectic antiflips. We present an explicit algorithm inspired by the minimal model program for complex 3-dimensional algebraic vari…

The study finds quasi-Einstein metrics on sphere bundles.

We discuss corks, and introduce new objects which we call plugs. Though plugs are fundamentally different objects, they also detect exotic smooth structures in 4-manifolds like corks. We discuss relation between corks, plugs and rational blow-downs. We show how to detect corks and plugs inside of some exotic manifolds.…

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 note, we prove the existence of weak solutions of the Chern-Ricci flow through blow downs of exceptional curves, as well as backwards smooth convergence away from the exceptional curves on compact complex surfaces. The smoothing property for the Chern-Ricci flow is also obtained on compact Hermitian manifolds o…

We derive constraints on Lagrangian embeddings in completions of certain stable symplectic fillings with semisimple symplectic cohomologies. Manifolds with these properties can be constructed by generalizing the boundary connected sum operation to our setting, and are related to certain birational surgeries like blow-d…

We study the one-parameter family of twisted Kahler Taub-NUT metrics (discovered by Donaldson), along with two exceptional Taub-NUT-like instantons, and understand them to the extend that should be sufficient for blow-up and gluing arguments. In particular we parametrize their geodesics from the origin, determine curva…

In this article we construct a new family of simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds with $b_2^+ =1$ and $c_1^2 =2$ which are not diffeomorphic to rational surfaces by using rational blow-down technique. As a corollary, we conclude that a rational surface ${\mathbf CP}^2 \sharp 7{\bar{\mathbf CP}^2}$ admits an exotic s…

As the sequel to [3], we construct a minimal complex surface of general type with p_g=0, K^2=2 and H_1=Z/2Z using a rational blow-down surgery and Q-Gorenstein smoothing theory. We also present an example of p_g = 0,K^2 = 2 and H_1 = Z/3Z.

Curves in higher dimensions are either affine or have super-Euclidean energy growth.

This paper improves a result on homology concordance in contractible manifolds and two bridge links.

In this note we complete the discussion of minimality of symplectic fiber sums. We find, that for fiber sums along spheres the minimality of the sum is determined by the cases discussed by M. Usher and one additional case: If the sum is the result of the rational blow-down of a symplectic -4-sphere in X, then it is non…

We construct a minimal complex surface of general type with $p_g=0$, $K^2 =4$, and $π_1=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$ using a rational blow-down surgery and a $\mathbb{Q}$-Gorenstein smoothing theory. In a similar fashion, we also construct a symplectic 4-manifold with $b_2^+=1$, $K^2=5$, and $π_1=\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$.

We give finiteness results and some classifications up to diffeomorphism of minimal strong symplectic fillings of Seifert fibered spaces over S^2 satisfying certain conditions, with a fixed natural contact structure. In some cases we can prove that all symplectic fillings are obtained by rational blow-downs of a plumbi…

This paper is an addendum to [4], in which the authors constructed a simply connected minimal complex surface of general type with p_g=0 and K^2=3. In this paper we construct a new non-simply connected minimal surface of general type with p_g=0, K^2=3 and H_1=Z/2Z using a rational blow-down surgery and Q-Gorenstein smo…

Let $M$ be a compact Kähler manifold and $N$ be a subvariety with codimension greater than or equal to 2. We show that there are no complete Kähler--Einstein metrics on $M-N$. As an application, let $E$ be an exceptional divisor of $M$. Then $M-E$ cannot admit any complete Kähler--Einstein metric if blow-down of $E$ is…