arXiv research

Unique simple spines of homotopy 2-spheres are shown to be ambiently isotopic.

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

The paper characterizes when a 2-sphere can be embedded in a knot trace.

Optimizes energy of mappings from complex projective spaces.

We show that any number of disjointly embedded 2-spheres in 4-space can be pulled apart by a link homotopy, ie, by a motion in which the 2-spheres stay disjoint but are allowed to self-intersect.

We show that the set of harmonic maps from the 2-dimensional stratified spheres with uniformly bounded energies contains only finitely many homotopy classes. We apply this result to construct infinitely many harmonic map flows and mean curvature flows of 2-sphere in the connected sum of two closed 3-dimensional manifol…

The purpose of this article is to describe connections between the loop space of the 2-sphere, Artin's braid groups, a choice of simplicial group whose homotopy groups are given by modules called Lie(n), as well as work of Milnor, and Habegger-Lin on "homotopy string links". The current article exploits Lie algebras as…

The space of all immersed closed curves of rotation degree 0 in the plane modulo reparametrizations has the same homotopy groups as the circle times the 2-sphere.

The paper confirms conjectures about the topology of triangulated polyhedra and geodesic triangulations on spheres.

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…

We prove that the space of gauge equivalence classes of U(1)-invariant connections on some SU(2)-principle bundles over the 4-sphere S^4 is weakly homotopy equivalent to a component of the second loop space of the 2-sphere S^2.

We give a short, simple and conceptual proof, based on spin structures, of sphere eversion: an embedded 2-sphere in $R^3$ can be turned inside out by regular homotopy. Ingredients of this eversion are seamlessly connected. We also give the mathematical origins of the proof: the Hopf fibration, and the topological struc…

We consider properties of the total absolute geodesic curvature functional on circle immersions into a Riemann surface. In particular, we study its behavior under regular homotopies, its infima in regular homotopy classes, and the homotopy types of spaces of its local minima. We consider properties of the total curvatu…

We describe a construction of Riemannian metrics of nonnegative sectional curvature on a closed smooth nonorientable 4-manifold with fundamental group of order two that realizes a homotopy class that was not previously known to contain nonnegatively curved manifolds. The procedure yields new metrics of nonnegative sect…

This is an expository article with complete proofs intended for a general non-specialist audience. The results are two-fold. First, we discuss a geometric invariant, that we call the width, of a manifold and show how it can be realized as the sum of areas of minimal 2-spheres. For instance, when $M$ is a homotopy 3-sph…

We identify the space of left-invariant oriented complex structures on the complex Heisenberg group, and prove that it has the homotopy type of the disjoint union of a point and a 2-sphere.

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 …

A (positive) locally convex curve in the 2-sphere is a curve with positive geodesic curvature (i.e., which always turns left). In the 3-sphere, it is a curve with positive torsion. In this work we discussed the topology of spaces of such curves with prescribed initial and final jets. The case of the 2-sphere is underst…

We use the Hopf fibration to explicitly compute generators of the second homotopy group of the flag manifolds of a compact Lie group. We show that these $2$-spheres have nice geometrical properties such as being totally geodesic surfaces with respect to any invariant metric on the flag manifold. We characterize when th…

An approach by J.Wu describes homotopy groups $π_{n}(S^2)$ of the standard 2-sphere as isotopy classes of spherical $n+1$--strand Brunnian braids is investigated in the case $n=3$ for applications.

We show that open 3-manifolds that have a locally finite decomposition along 2-spheres are characterized by the existence of a Riemannian metric with respect to which the second homotopy group of the manifold is generated by small elements.

Sacks-Uhlenbeck's result on metric spaces expanded.

New bounds and examples for sphere unknotting numbers.

The study proves a gap theorem for CAT(0) spaces with a constant below 1/(6√π).

This article investigates when homotopies can be converted to monotone homotopies without increasing the lengths of curves. A monotone homotopy is one which consists of curves which are simple or constant, and in which curves are pairwise disjoint. We show that, if the boundary of a Riemannian disc can be contracted th…

2-spheres in 4-manifolds have complete concordance obstructions if they have immersed dual spheres.

We characterize those planar Peano continua that are homotopy equivalent to 1-dimensional sets. While many planar Peano continua are not homotopically 1-dimensional, we prove that each has fundamental group that embeds in the fundamental group of a 1-dimensional planar Peano continuum. We leave open the following quest…

Mess showed that the genus 2 Torelli group $T_2$ is isomorphic to a free group of countably infinite rank by showing that genus 2 Torelli space is homotopy equivalent to an infinite wedge of circles. As an application of his computation, we compute the homotopy type of the zero locus of any classical genus 2 theta func…

Elementary geometric arguments are used to compute the group of homotopy classes of maps from a 4-manifold X to the 3-sphere, and to enumerate the homotopy classes of maps from X to the 2-sphere. The former completes a project initiated by Steenrod in the 1940's, and the latter provides geometric arguments for and exte…

Given a sweepout of a Riemannian 2-sphere which is composed of curves of length less than L, we construct a second sweepout composed of curves of length less than L which are either constant curves or simple curves. This result, and the methods used to prove it, have several consequences; we answer a question of M. Fre…

32 knot projections classified based on forbidden Reidemeister moves.

New non-orientable 4-manifolds created via knotting operations.

In this paper, we first give a new simple proof to the elimination theorem of definite fold by homotopy for generic smooth maps of manifolds of dimension strictly greater than $2$ into the $2$--sphere or into the real projective plane. Our new proof has the advantage that it is not only constructive, but is also algori…

Three-component links in the 3-dimensional sphere were classified up to link homotopy by John Milnor in his senior thesis, published in 1954. A complete set of invariants is given by the pairwise linking numbers p, q and r of the components, and by the residue class of one further integer mu, the "triple linking number…

Dehn twists on K3-type 4-manifolds are not homotopy coherently Nielsen realizable.

We give a survey of the theory of surface braid groups and the lower algebraic K-theory of their group rings. We recall several definitions and describe various properties of surface braid groups, such as the existence of torsion, orderability, linearity, and their relation both with mapping class groups and with the h…

Invariant detects triple points in sphere immersions.

This paper explores Brunnian twin groups and their properties.

We determine a set of generators for the Brunnian braids on a general surface $M$ for $M\not=S^2$ or $\RP^2$. For the case $M=S^2$ or $\RP^2$, a set of generators for the Brunnian braids on $M$ is given by our generating set together with the homotopy groups of a 2-sphere.

To each three-component link in the 3-sphere, we associate a geometrically natural characteristic map from the 3-torus to the 2-sphere, and show that the pairwise linking numbers and Milnor triple linking number that classify the link up to link homotopy correspond to the Pontryagin invariants that classify its charact…

New 5-manifold without 'spine' challenges deformation conjecture.

The paper proves the existence of H-spheres with arbitrary codimensions in certain Riemannian manifolds.

We show that every closed oriented smooth 4-manifold admits a complete singular Poisson structure in each homotopy class of maps to the 2-sphere. The rank of this structure is 2 outside a small singularity set, which consists of finitely many circles and isolated points. The Poisson bivector has rank 0 on the singulari…

The paper studies the space of Gauss maps of complete minimal surfaces and their homotopy types.

In this paper, we introduce the classification of equivariant principal bundles over the 2-sphere. Isotropy representations provide tools for understanding the classification of equivariant principal bundles. We consider a $Γ$-equivariant principal $G$-bundle over $S^2$ with structural group $G$ a compact connected Lie…

Study of Willmore energy on sphere sublevel sets and flow singularities.

Computes homotopy types of embedding spaces in tight contact 3-manifolds.

David Gabai recently proved a smooth 4-dimensional "Light Bulb Theorem" in the absence of 2-torsion in the fundamental group. We extend his result to 4-manifolds with arbitrary fundamental group by showing that an invariant of Mike Freedman and Frank Quinn gives the complete obstruction to "homotopy implies isotopy" fo…