arXiv research

Perelman's proof confirmed, new method uses 4D topology.

Study shows exotic Dehn twists on certain 3-sphere fillings.

We give a generalization of Fukaya's Morse homotopy theoretic approach for 2-loop Chern--Simons perturbation theory to 3-valent graphs with arbitrary number of loops at least 2. We construct a sequence of invariants of integral homology 3-spheres with values in a space of 3-valent graphs (Jacobi diagrams or Feynman dia…

We show that the disk complex of a genus $g>1$ Heegaard surface for the 3-sphere is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of $(2g-2)$-dimensional spheres. This implies that genus $g>1$ Heegaard surfaces for the 3-sphere are topologically minimal with index $2g-1$.

We show that if a link J in the 3-sphere is homotopy ribbon concordant to a link L then the Alexander polynomial of L divides the Alexander polynomial of J.

We define an invariant of rational homology 3-spheres via vector fields. The construction of our invariant is a generalization of both that of the Kontsevich-Kuperberg-Thurston invariant and that of Watanabe's Morse homotopy invariant, which implies the equivalence of these two invariants.

Study spaces of knots and links in specific 3-manifolds.

We investigate the disparity between smooth and topological almost concordance of knots in general 3-manifolds Y. Almost concordance is defined by considering knots in Y modulo concordance in Yx[0,1] and the action of the concordance group of knots in the 3-sphere that ties in local knots. We prove that the trivial fre…

Study determines scalar curvature invariants for 3-spheres embedded in 4-manifolds.

Given a 3-manifold $Y$ and a free homotopy class in $[S^1,Y]$, we investigate the set of topological concordance classes of knots in $Y \times [0,1]$ representing the given homotopy class. The concordance group of knots in the 3-sphere acts on this set. We show in many cases that the action is not transitive, using two…

New theory proves infinite homology 3-spheres in homology 4-spheres.

Defines a new Steenrod square for virtual links, linking to Khovanov-Lipshitz-Sarkar stable homotopy type.

The study finds many tight contact structures on hyperbolic 3-spheres.

Authors prove a conjecture about the Goeritz group of 3-sphere Heegaard splittings.

We compute the mapping class group of the manifolds $\sharp^g(S^{2k+1}\times S^{2k+1})$ for $k>0$ in terms of the automorphism group of the middle homology and the group of homotopy $(4k+3)$-spheres. We furthermore identify its Torelli subgroup, determine the abelianisations, and relate our results to the group of homo…

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…

Study the spaces of Legendrian knots and links with maximal Thurston-Bennequin invariant.

This paper deals with certain results on the number of smooth structures on quaternionic projective spaces, obtained through the computation of inertia group and its analogues, which in turn are computed using techniques from stable homotopy theory. We show that the concordance inertia group is trivial in dimension 20,…

We discuss an "extrinsic" property of knots in a 3-subspace of the 3-sphere $S^3$ to characterize how the subspace is embedded in $S^3$. Specifically, we show that every knot in a subspace of the 3-sphere is transient if and only if the exterior of the subspace is a disjoint union of handlebodies, i.e. regular neighbor…

From the homotopy groups of two cubic spherical 3-manifolds we construct the isomorphic groups of deck transformations acting on the 3-sphere. These groups become the cyclic group of order eight and the quaternion group respectively. By reduction of representations from the orthogonal group to the identity representati…

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

Quasi-holomorphic homotopies of immersions of 3-manifolds into 5-manifolds

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…

Note on connectedness of primitive disk complex.

The original Smale Conjecture asserted that the inclusion of the group O(4) of isometries of the round 3-sphere S into the full diffeomorphism group Diff(S) is a homotopy equivalence. The (Generalized) Smale Conjecture asserts that the inclusion of Isom(M) into Diff(M) is a homotopy equivalence whenever M is an ellipti…

Using Furuta's idea of finite dimensional approximation in Seiberg-Witten theory, we refine Seiberg-Witten Floer homology to obtain an invariant of homology 3-spheres which lives in the S^1-equivariant graded suspension category. In particular, this gives a construction of Seiberg-Witten Floer homology that avoids the …

In this article, we classify all involutions on S^6 with 3-dimensional fixed point set. In particular, we discuss the relation between the classification of involutions with fixed point set a knotted 3-sphere and the classification of free involutions on homotopy CP^3's.

A necessary and sufficient algebraic condition for a diffeomorphism over a surface embedded in the 3-sphere to be induced by a regular homotopic deformation is discussed, and a formula for the number of signed pass moves needed for this regular homotopy is given.

Researchers compute Floer homotopy types and eta invariants for Seifert 3-manifolds.

Develops equivariant Seiberg-Witten-Floer cohomology for 3-spheres.

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…

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…

Embeddings of surfaces in 5-manifolds are classified by an invariant.

Let K be a non-trivial knot in the 3-sphere and let Y be the 3-manifold obtained by surgery on K with surgery-coefficient 1. Using tools from gauge theory and symplectic topology, it is shown that the fundamental group of Y admits a non-trivial homomorphism to the group SO(3). In particular, Y cannot be a homotopy-sphe…

Classifies defects in ordered media using homotopy theory.

New homotopy types defined for links in thickened surfaces with higher genus.

New parameterization for $(1,1)$-knots simplifies their study.

Regular homotopy classes of immersions of a 3-sphere in 5-space constitute an infinite cyclic group. The classes containing embeddings form a subgroup of index 24. The obstruction for a generic immersion to be regularly homotopic to an embedding is described in terms of geometric invariants of its self intersection. Ge…

We define and prove properties of link lattice complexes for plumbed links.

Let $LHT$ be a left handed trefoil knot and $K$ be any knot. We define $M_n(K)$ to be the homology $3$-sphere which is represented by a simple link of $LHT$ and $LHT \sharp K$ with framings $0$ and $n$ respectively. Starting with this link, we construct homotopy $K3$ and spin rational homology $K3$ surfaces containing …

We classify compact oriented $5$-manifolds with free fundamental group and $π_{2}$ a torsion free abelian group in terms of the second homotopy group considered as $π_1$-module, the cup product on the second cohomology of the universal covering, and the second Stiefel-Whitney class of the universal covering. We apply t…

Using basic homotopy constructions, we show that isomorphism classes of string structures on spin bundles are naturally given by certain degree 3 cohomology classes, which we call string classes, on the total space of the bundle. Using a Hodge isomorphism, we then show that the harmonic representative of a string class…

In two previous papers, the two first-named authors introduced a notion of contact r-surgery along Legendrian knots in contact 3-manifolds. They also showed how (at least in principle) to convert any contact r-surgery into a sequence of contact plus or minus 1 surgeries, and used this to prove that any (closed) contact…

A link L in the 3-sphere is called Brunnian if every proper sublink of L is trivial. In a previous paper, the first author proved that the restriction to Brunnian links of any Goussarov-Vassiliev finite type invariant of (n+1)-component links of degree<2n is trivial. The purpose of this paper is to study the first nont…

We consider mapping class groups Γ(M) = pi_0 Diff(M fix \partial M) of smooth compact simply connected oriented 4-manifolds M bounded by a collection of 3-spheres. We show that if M contains CP^2 (with either orientation) as a connected summand then Γ(M) is independent of the number of boundary components. By repackagi…

The Generalized Smale Conjecture asserts that if M is a closed 3-manifold with constant positive curvature, then the inclusion of the group of isometries into the group of diffeomorphisms is a homotopy equivalence. For the 3-sphere, this was the classical Smale Conjecture proved by A. Hatcher. N. Ivanov proved the Gene…

The main result of this paper is a new classification theorem for links (smooth embeddings in codimension 2). The classifying space is the rack space (defined in [Trunks and classifying spaces, Applied Categorical Structures, 3 (1995) 321--356]) and the classifying bundle is the first James bundle (defined in "James bu…

New insights into Khovanov homology complexity and topological structure.