arXiv research

Study of 3-handle attachments in 4D manifolds using Kirby calculus.

Defines extended TQFTs using handle attachments.

J. Boyle classified 1-handles attached to surface-knots, that are closed and connected surfaces embedded in the Euclidean 4-space, in the case that the surfaces are oriented and 1-handles are orientable with respect to the orientations of the surfaces. In that case, the equivalence classes of 1-handles correspond to th…

Formulae for 1-3 handle attachments in 4-manifolds.

We review Giroux's contact handles and contact handle attachments in dimension three and show that a bypass attachment consists of a pair of contact 1 and 2-handles. As an application we describe explicit contact handle decompositions of infinitely many pairwise non-isotopic overtwisted 3-spheres. We also give an alter…

A standard convexity condition on the boundary of a symplectic manifold involves an induced positive contact form (and contact structure) on the boundary; the corresponding concavity condition involves an induced negative contact form. We present two methods of symplectically attaching 2-handles to convex boundaries of…

Holomorphic handle attaching proves complex surface properties.

For spin manifolds with boundary we consider Riemannian metrics which are product near the boundary and are such that the corresponding Dirac operator is invertible when half-infinite cylinders are attached at the boundary. The main result of this paper is that these properties of a metric can be preserved when the met…

We prove that a crossing change along a double point circle on a 2-knot is realized by ribbon-moves for a knotted torus obtained from the 2-knot by attaching a 1-handle. It follows that any 2-knots for which the crossing change is an unknotting operation, such as ribbon 2-knots and twist-spun knots, have trivial Khovan…

Paper introduces tensor product of quandles for knot classification.

We prove generic fibre of Painlevé moduli spaces are Weinstein handlebodies.

We prove that knots obtained by attaching a band to a split link satisfy the cabling conjecture. We also give new proofs that unknotting number one knots are prime and that genus is superadditive under band sum. Additionally, we prove a collection of results comparing two 2-handle additions to a genus two boundary comp…

We show that the smooth $4$-manifold $M$ obtained by attaching a $2$-handle to $B^4$ along a certain knot $K\subset \partial B^4$ admits infinitely many absolutely exotic copies $M_n$, $n=0,1,2..$, such that each copy $M_n$ is obtained by attaching $2$-handle to a fixed compact smooth contractible manifold $W$ along th…

Real Milnor fibres become contractible after attaching handles, matching classical results.

In this paper we give explicit, handle-by-handle constructions of concave symplectic fillings of all closed, oriented contact 3-manifolds. These constructions combine recent results of Giroux relating contact structures and open book decompositions of 3-manifolds, earlier results of the author on attaching 4-dimensiona…

We show that the first eigenvalue of a closed Riemannian surface normalized by the area can be strictly increased by attaching a cylinder or a cross cap. As a consequence we obtain the existence of maximizing metrics for the normalized first eigenvalue on any closed surface of fixed topological type. Since these metric…

Proves finiteness for 3-manifolds from handlebodies with 2-handles.

We give a definition of symplectic homology for pairs of filled Liouville cobordisms, and show that it satisfies analogues of the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms except for the dimension axiom. The resulting long exact sequence of a pair generalizes various earlier long exact sequences such as the handle attaching sequence, …

Let M be a closed, irreducible, genus two 3-manifold, and F a maximal collection of pairwise disjoint, closed, orientable, incompressible surfaces embedded in M. Then each component manifold M_i of M-F has handle number at most one, i.e. admits a Heegaard splitting obtained by attaching a single 1-handle to one or two …

Attaching a 2-handle to a genus two or greater boundary component of a 3-manifold is a natural generalization of Dehn filling a torus boundary component. We prove that there is an interesting relationship between an essential surface in a sutured 3-manifold, the number of intersections between the boundary of the surfa…

Let $M$ be a simple manifold, and $F$ be a component of $\partial M$ of genus two. For a slope $γ$ on $F$, we denote by $M(γ)$ the manifold obtained by attaching a 2-handle to $M$ along a regular neighborhood of $γ$ on $F$. In this paper, we shall prove that there is at most one separating slope $γ$ on $F$ so that $M(γ…

The paper simplifies embedding spaces in manifolds by attaching handles.

A new method converts knot Floer homology to immersed curves.

We construct a small, hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ such that, for any integer $g\geq 2$, there are infinitely many separating slopes $r$ in $\partial M$ so that $M(r)$, the 3-manifold obtained by attaching a 2-handle to $M$ along $r$, is hyperbolic and contains an essential separating closed surface of genus $g$. The resu…

The paper calculates a new invariant for 4-manifolds using handle decompositions and skein relations.

For the oriented 3-dimensional handlebody constructed from a 3-ball by attaching g 1-handles, it is shown that the natural surjection from the group of orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of it to the mapping class group of it has no section when g is at least 6.

We propose a global invariant $σ_c$ for contact manifolds which admit a strictly pseudoconvex CR structure, analogous to the Yamabe invariant $σ$. We prove that this invariant is non-decreasing under handle attaching and under connected sum. We then give a lower bound on $σ_c$ in a particular case.

Two codimension-one submanifolds are cobordant if they have the same homology class.

For a smoothing Y of a 2-dimensional cyclic quotient singularity X, we construct a simple handle decomposition of Y by using a particular birational map from Y to the projective plane. The manifold Y is built up from the product of an annulus with a disk by attaching 2-handles in a manner which can be described by mean…

The paper studies invariants of surfaces in the 3-sphere using handlebody-links.

We construct a hyperbolic 3-manifold $M$ (with $\partial M$ totally geodesic) which contains no essential closed surfaces, but for any even integer $g> 0$ there are infinitely many separating slopes $r$ on $\partial M$ so that $M[r]$, the 3-manifold obtained by attaching 2-handle to $M$ along $r$, contains an essential…

We prove the existence of complete, embedded, constant mean curvature 1 surfaces in 3 dimensional hyperbolic space when g, the genus of the surface, and n, the number of ends of the surface, satisfy either g=0 and $n\geq 1$ or $g \geq 1$ and $2n\geq g+5$. The surfaces are all regular points of their corresponding modul…

Let $H$ be a strongly irreducible Heegaard surface in a closed oriented Riemannian $3$-manifold. We prove that $H$ is either isotopic to a minimal surface of index at most one or isotopic to the boundary of a tubular neighborhood about a non-orientable minimal surface with a vertical handle attached. This confirms a lo…

For all $m \in \mathbb N - \{0\}$, we prove the existence of a one dimensional family of genus $m$, constant mean curvature (equal to 1) surfaces which are complete, immersed in $\mathbb R^3$ and have two Delaunay ends asymptotic to nodoïdal ends. Moreover, these surfaces are invariant under the group of isometries of …

This paper uses ML to identify prey handling in seals.

The study distinguishes exotic R^4's using knot Floer homology and Casson handles.

We prove a homological stability theorem for moduli spaces of manifolds of dimension $2n$, for attaching handles of index at least $n$, after these manifolds have been stabilised by countably many copies of $S^n \times S^n$. Combined with previous work of the authors, we obtain an analogue of the Madsen--Weiss theorem …

Study Weinstein structures on toric divisors' complements.

New findings about twists in 4-sphere diffeomorphisms.

We construct a compact, contractible 4-manifold $C$, an infinite-order self-diffeomorphism $f$ of its boundary, and a smooth embedding of $C$ into a closed, simply connected 4-manifold $X$, such that the manifolds obtained by cutting $C$ out of $X$ and regluing it by powers of $f$ are all pairwise nondiffeomorphic. The…

Positive scalar curvature metrics on cobordisms yield only reducible Seiberg-Witten solutions.

The study of $PD_3$-pairs extends results for aspherical 3-manifolds.

Study shows simplicial volume is superadditive under specific conditions.

Four constructions of constant mean curvature (CMC) hypersurfaces in the (n+1)-sphere are given, which should be considered analogues of `classical' constructions that are possible for CMC hypersurfaces in Euclidean space. First, Delaunay-like hypersurfaces, consisting roughly of a chain of hyperspheres winding multipl…

This article sketches various ideas in contact geometry that have become useful in low-dimensional topology. Specifically we (1) outline the proof of Eliashberg and Thurston's results concerning perturbations of foliatoins into contact structures, (2) discuss Eliashberg and Weinstein's symplectic handle attachments, an…

Let $M$ be a simple 3-manifold such that one component of $\partial M$, say $F$, has genus at least two. For a slope $α$ on $F$, we denote by $M(α)$ the manifold obtained by attaching a 2-handle to $M$ along a regular neighborhood of $α$ on $F$. If $M(α)$ is reducible, then $α$ is called a reducing slope. In this paper…

New exotic 4D spaces found using knot slicing techniques.

Proves finiteness and holonomicity of skein modules for 3-manifolds.