arXiv research

The paper explores coalescent contractions in contractible spaces, providing criteria and examples.

Exotic diffeomorphism survives stabilizations on a contractible 4-manifold.

New findings show infinitely many non-homeomorphic manifolds with same proper homotopy type.

We survey some topics in ${\mathbb A}^1$-homotopy theory. Our main goal is to highlight the interplay between ${\mathbb A}^1$-homotopy theory and affine algebraic geometry, focusing on the varieties that are "contractible" from various standpoints.

We prove a "gluing" theorem for monotone homotopies; a monotone homotopy is a homotopy through simple contractible closed curves which themselves are pairwise disjoint. We show that two monotone homotopies which have appropriate overlap can be replaced by a single monotone homotopy. The ideas used to prove this theorem…

Homotopy types of curve and arc complexes are studied.

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…

RSHT algorithm simplifies complex shapes to points.

We prove two theorems about homotopies of curves on 2-dimensional Riemannian manifolds. We show that, for any epsilon > 0, if two simple closed curves are homotopic through curves of bounded length L, then they are also isotopic through curves of length bounded by L + epsilon. If the manifold is orientable, then for an…

We find a minimal differential graded (dg) operad whose generic representations in $R^n$ are in one-to-one correspondence with formal germs of those endomorphisms of the tangent bundle to $R^n$ which satisfy the Nijenhuis integrability condition. This operad is of a surprisingly simple origin -- it is the cobar constru…

We prove contractibility of VR complexes for integer lattices up to dimension 5.

Here we study two interesting smooth contractible manifolds, whose boundaries have non-trivial mapping class groups. The first one is a non-Stein contractible manifold, such that every self diffeomorphism of its boundary extends inside; implying that this manifold can not be a loose cork. The second example is a Stein …

We prove exponential growth rate of contractible closed geodesics for an arbitrary bumpy metric on manifolds of the form X#Y, where the fundamental group of X has a subgroup of finite index at least 3 and Y is simply connected and not a homotopy sphere.

The study finds infinite geodesics on manifolds with specific homotopy group properties.

The paper studies formal geometry of dg manifolds and proves isomorphism of their calculi.

Given an $n$-gon, the poset of all collections of pairwise non-crossing diagonals is isomorphic to the face poset of some convex polytope called \textit{associahedron}. We replace in this setting the $n$-gon (viewed as a disc with $n$ marked points on the boundary) with an arbitrary oriented surface with a number of la…

Suppose that $M$ is a $2$-dimensional oriented Riemannian manifold, and let $γ$ be a simple closed curve on $M$. Let $m γ$ denote the curve formed by tracing $γ$ $m$ times. We prove that if $m γ$ is contractible through curves of length less than $L$, then $γ$ is contractible through curves of length less than $L$. In …

We investigate a special kind of contraction of symmetric spaces (respectively, of Lie triple systems), called homotopy. In this first part of a series of two papers we construct such contractions for classical symmetric spaces in an elementary way by using associative algebras with several involutions. This constructi…

Finite type for 3-manifolds with boundary.

We show that the complex of free factors of a free group of rank n > 1 is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres of dimension n-2. We also prove that for n > 1, the complement of (unreduced) Outer space in the free splitting complex is homotopy equivalent to the complex of free factor systems and moreover is (n-2)-c…

This is a "software upgrade" to a paper originally published in 1976, with cleaner statements and improved proofs. The main result is that, in a Haken 3-manifold, the space of all incompressible surfaces in a single isotopy class is contractible, except when the surface is the fiber of a surface bundle structure, in wh…

Let $S$ be a complete flat surface, such as the Euclidean plane. We determine the homeomorphism class of the space of all curves on $S$ which start and end at given points in given directions and whose curvatures are constrained to lie in a given open interval, in terms of all parameters involved. Any connected compone…

We prove the existence of infinitely many periodic points of symplectomorphisms isotopic to the identity if they admit at least one (non-contractible) hyperbolic periodic orbit and satisfy some condition on its flux. The obtained periodic points correspond to periodic orbits whose free homotopy classes are formed by it…

Groups $Π_k(X;σ)$ of "flagged homotopies" are introduced of which the usual (abelian for $k>1$) homotopy groups $π_k(X;p)$ is the limit case for flags $σ$ contracted to a point $p$. Calculus of exterior forms with values in algebra $A$ is developped of which the limit cases are differential forms calculus (for $A=\bb R…

We construct a triangulation of a compactification of the Moduli space of a surface with at least one puncture that is closely related to the Deligne-Mumford compactification. Specifically, there is a surjective map from the compactification we construct to the Deligne-Mumford compactification so that the inverse image…

Contractible diffeomorphism groups on lens spaces derived from Morse-Bott foliations.

We show that there are homotopy equivalences $h:N\to M$ between closed manifolds which are induced by cell-like maps $p:N\to X$ and $q:M\to X$ but which are not homotopic to homeomorphisms. The phenomenon is based on construction of cell-like maps that kill certain $\mathbb L$-classes. The image space in these construc…

The paper proves homotopy equivalences for spaces of unbounded Fredholm operators.

We discuss natural operations on loops in a quasi-surface and show that these operations define a structure of a quasi-Lie bialgebra in the module generated by the set of free homotopy classes of non-contractible loops.

We study the relationship between fibered ribbon 1-knots and fibered ribbon 2-knots by studying fibered slice disks with handlebody fibers. We give a characterization of fibered homotopy-ribbon disks and give analogues of the Stallings twist for fibered disks and 2-knots. As an application, we produce infinite families…

We prove that for a weakly exact magnetic system on a closed connected Riemannian manifold, almost all energy levels contain a closed orbit. More precisely, we prove the following stronger statements. Let $(M,g)$ denote a closed connected Riemannian manifold and $σ$ a weakly exact 2-form. Let $φ_{t}$ denote the magneti…

In the paper [Probab. Theory Relat. Fields, 100 (1994) 417-428] Xue-Mei Li has shown that the moment stability of an SDE is closely connected with the topology of the underlying manifold. In particular, she gave sufficient condition on SDE on a manifold $M$ under which the fundamental group $π_1 M=0$. We prove that in …

We inspect Vietoris-Rips complexes $VR_t(X)$ of certain metric spaces $X$ using a new generalization of Bestvina-Brady discrete Morse theory. Our main result is a pair of metric criteria on $X$, called the Morse Criterion and Link Criterion, that allow us to deduce information about the homotopy types of certain $VR_t(…

We answer a question of Liokumovich-Nabutovsky-Rotman showing that if D is a Riemannian 2-disc with boundary length L, diameter d and area A << d then D can be filled by a homotopy where the lengths of the intermediate curves are bounded by $L+2d+O(\sqrt A)$.

We prove that a locally compact space with an upper curvature bound is a topological manifold if and only if all of its spaces of directions are homotopy equivalent and not contractible. We discuss applications to homology manifolds, limits of Riemannian manifolds and deduce a sphere theorem.

A new method calculates the minimum volume swept by a sphere's homotopy in 3D space.

We show how to construct absolutely exotic smooth structures on compact 4-manifolds with boundary, including contractible manifolds. In particular, we prove that any compact smooth 4-manifold W with boundary that admits a relatively exotic structure contains a pair of codimension-zero submanifolds homotopy equivalent t…

Under certain conditions, we describe the homotopy type of the homo-topy fibre of the inclusion map F\_n(X) $\rightarrow$ $\prod$\_1^n X for the n-th configuration space F\_n(X) of a topological manifold X without boundary such that dim(X) $\ge$ 3. We then apply our results to the cases where either the universal cover…

The paper defines a new equivalence relation for knot projections and finds an infinite number of distinct classes.

We give a short proof of the contractibility of the space of geodesic triangulations with fixed combinatorial type of a convex polygon in the Euclidean plane. Moreover, for any $n>0$, we show that there exists a space of geodesic triangulations of a polygon with a triangulation, whose $n$-th homotopy group is not trivi…

Kervaire's sphere-link is equivalent to a ribbon sphere-link, simplifying complex 2-complexes.

In this paper we deduce a local deformation lemma for uniform embeddings in a metric covering space over a compact manifold from the deformation lemma for embeddings of a compact subspace in a manifold. This implies the local contractibility of the group of uniform homeomorphisms of such a metric covering space under t…

New example shows noncontractible fiberings for a 3-manifold.

Geometric models for algebraic suspensions using affine deformation spaces.

In this paper we compute the homotopy groups of the symplectomorphism groups of the 3-, 4- and 5-point blow-ups of the projective plane (considered as monotone symplectic Del Pezzo surfaces). Along the way, we need to compute the homotopy groups of the compactly supported symplectomorphism groups of the cotangent bundl…

Homotopy equivalence shown between complex and thickened versions of manifolds.

A smooth curve $γ: [0,1] \to \Ss^2$ is locally convex if its geodesic curvature is positive at every point. J. A. Little showed that the space of all locally convex curves $γ$ with $γ(0) = γ(1) = e_1$ and $γ'(0) = γ'(1) = e_2$ has three connected components $L_{-1,c}$, $L_{+1}$, $L_{-1,n}$. The space $\cL_{-1,c}$ is kn…

Knot lattice homology invariant of smooth knot type in rational homology spheres.