arXiv research

Disk surgery on primitive disks of genus-3 Heegaard splittings of 3-sphere yields no primitive disks.

New surgery operation preserves monotonicity of Lagrangians.

Let $K$ be an unknot in $8$-bridge position in the $3$-sphere. We give an example of a pair of weak reducing disks $D_1$ and $D_2$ for $K$ such that both disks obtained from $D_i$ ($i = 1, 2$) by a surgery along any outermost disk in $D_{3-i}$, cut off by an outermost arc of $D_i \cap D_{3-i}$ in $D_{3-i}$, are not wea…

We considered a surgery, called Lagrangian attaching disk surgery, that can be applied to a Lagrangian surface L at the presence of a Lagrangian attaching disk D, to obtain a new Lagrangian surface L' which is always smoothly isotopic to L. We showed that this type of surgery includes all even generalized Dehn twists a…

Study curves on surfaces with surgeries connecting them.

Geometrically, Legendrian surfaces related by surgery have related skein-valued cluster spaces.

Even though the disk embedding theorem is not available in dimension 4 for free fundamental groups, some surgery problems may be shown to have topological solutions. We prove that surgery problems may be solved if one considers closed 4-manifolds and the intersection pairing is extended from the integers, and prove a r…

We define a Floer-homology invariant for knots in an oriented three-manifold, closely related to the holomorphic disk Floer homologies for three-manifolds defined in an earlier paper. We set up basic properties of these invariants, including an Euler characteristic calculation, behaviour under connected sums. Then, we …

For a 3-manifold M and a subsurface $X$ of the boundary of M with empty or incompressible boundary we use surgery to identify a graph whose vertices are disks with boundary in X and which is quasi-isometrically embedded in the curve graph of X.

The disk embedding lemma is a technique underlying the topological classification results in 4-manifold topology for good fundamental groups. The purpose of this paper is to develop new tools for disk embedding that work up to s-cobordism, without restrictions on the fundamental group. As an application we show that a …

Positive surgery on knots in weakly fillable 3-manifolds yields weakly fillable contact structures.

This paper completely answers the question of when contact (r)-surgery on a Legendrian knot in the standard contact structure on the 3-sphere yields a symplectically fillable contact manifold for r in (0,1]. We also give obstructions for other positive r and investigate Lagrangian fillings of Legendrian knots.

New method fills cluster seeds with exact Lagrangian structures.

We introduce a collection of 1/2-$π_1$-null 4-dimensional surgery problems. This is an intermediate notion between the classically studied universal surgery models and the $π_1$-null kernels which are known to admit a solution in the topological category. Using geometric applications of the group-theoretic 2-Engel rela…

In 1998, Gompf described a Stein domain structure on the disk cotangent bundle of any closed surface S, by a Legendrian handlebody diagram. We prove that Gompf's Stein domain is symplectomorphic to the disk cotangent bundle equipped with its canonical symplectic structure and the boundary of this domain is contactomorp…

Proves existence of mean curvature flow with surgery for free boundary surfaces.

Researchers identify graph components for unicellular collections.

Persistently foliar knots have a unique foliation property under certain surgeries.

We show a connection between a surgery exact sequence in knot Floer homology and the sequence derived in [18]. As a consequence of this relationship we see that the exact sequence in [18] also works with coherent orientations and admits refinements with respect to spinc-structures. As an application of this discussion,…

The validity of Freedman's disk theorem is known to depend only on the fundamental group. It was conjectured that it fails for nonabelian free fundamental groups. If this were true then surgery theory would work in dimension four. Recently, Krushkal and Lee proved a surprising result that surgery theory works for a lar…

We give a survey of geometric approaches to the topological 4-dimensional surgery and 5-dimensional s-cobordism conjectures, with a focus on the study of surfaces in 4-manifolds. The geometric lemma underlying these conjectures is a statement about smooth immersions of disks and of certain 2-complexes, capped gropes, i…

Suppose $K$ is a hyperbolic knot in a solid torus $V$ intersecting a meridian disk $D$ twice. We will show that if $K$ is not the Whitehead knot and the frontier of a regular neighborhood of $K \cup D$ is incompressible in the knot exterior, then $K$ admits at most one exceptional surgery, which must be toroidal. Embed…

Study how Dehn surgery affects surfaces with minimal Thurston norm.

A link in the 3-sphere is homotopically trivial, according to Milnor, if its components bound disjoint maps of disks in the 4-ball. This paper concerns the question of what spaces give rise to the same class of homotopically trivial links when used in place of disks in an analogous definition. We show that there are 4-…

The standard P. A. Smith theory of p-group actions on spheres, disks, and euclidean spaces is extended to the case of p-group actions on tori (i.e., products of circles) and coupled with topological surgery theory to give a complete topological classification, valid in all dimensions, of the locally linear, orientation…

This is a survey article about knot Floer homology. We present three constructions of this invariant: the original one using holomorphic disks, a combinatorial description using grid diagrams, and a combinatorial description in terms of the cube of resolutions. We discuss the geometric information carried by knot Floer…

A new proof shows a reducing sphere can be obtained from a given sphere without surgeries.

We study Weinstein 4-manifolds which admit Lagrangian skeleta given by attaching disks to a surface along a collection of simple closed curves. In terms of the curves describing one such skeleton, we describe surgeries that preserve the ambient Weinstein manifold, but change the skeleton. The surgeries can be iterated …

Let M be a closed oriented three-manifold, whose prime decomposition contains no aspherical factors. We show that for any initial riemannian metric on M the solution to the Ricci flow with surgery, defined in our previous paper math.DG/0303109, becomes extinct in finite time. The proof uses a version of the minimal dis…

One can define the complexity of a smooth 4-manifold as the minimal sum of the number of disks, strands and crossings in a Kirby diagram. Martelli proved that the number of homeomorphism classes of complexity less than n grows as $n^2$. In this paper we prove that the number of diffeomorphism classes grows at least as …

The paper finds exotic non-trivial elements in the rational homotopy groups of Diff(S^4).

The paper develops a bordered $\mathit{HF}^-$ theory using link surgery formula.

In an earlier paper (math.SG/0101206), we introduced Floer homology theories associated to closed, oriented three-manifolds Y and SpinC structures. In the present paper, we give calculations and study the properties of these invariants. The calculations suggest a conjectured relationship with Seiberg-Witten theory. The…

New theorem connects handle-ribbon knots to slice derivatives.

Classifies smooth manifolds homotopy equivalent to sphere products

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…

The study examines obstructions to links being shake slice.

New proof confirms 4-manifolds with weakly reducible genus-three trisections are standard.

Note on connectedness of primitive disk complex.

New theorem shows when spheres with duals can be smoothly deformed.

New knots bound multiple non-isotopic ribbon disks.

We study cobordisms and cobordisms rel boundary of PL locally-flat disk knots $D^{n-2}\into D^n$. Cobordisms of disk knots that do not fix the boundary sphere knots are easily classified by the cobordism properties of these boundaries, and any two even-dimensional disk knots with isotopic boundary knots are cobordant r…

Khovanov homology fails to differentiate certain slice disks.

New invariant distinguishes lens spaces via categorified homotopy E_3-algebra.

For a genus two Heegaard splitting of a lens space, the primitive disk complex is defined to be the full subcomplex of the disk complex for one of the handlebodies of the splitting spanned by all vertices of primitive disks. In this work, we describe the complete combinatorial structure of the primitive disk complex fo…

We study the classification of slice disks of knots up to isotopy and diffeomorphism using an invariant in knot Floer homology. We compute the invariant of a slice disk obtained by deform-spinning, and show that it can be effectively used to distinguish non-isotopic slice disks with diffeomorphic complements. Given a s…

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

New disks found with similar outer shapes.