arXiv research

Unpublished results of S Straus and W Browder state that two notions of homotopy equivalence for manifolds with smooth group actions - isovariant and equivariant - often coincide under a condition called the Gap Hypothesis; the proofs use deep results in geometric topology. This paper analyzes the difference between th…

Study homotopy groups of open books and their pages, pages, and bindings.

Proves approximation and interpolation for regular immersions directed by algebraically elliptic cones.

In this paper we prove a tertiary index theorem which relates a spectral geometric and a homotopy theoretic invariant of an almost complex manifold with framed boundary. It is derived from the index theoretic and homotopy theoretic versions of a complex elliptic genus and interestingly related with the structure of the…

By results of Loeffler and Comezana, the Pontrjagin-Thom map from geometric G-equivariant bordism to homotopy theoretic equivariant bordism is injective for compact abelian G. If G = S^1 x ... x S^1, we prove that the associated fixed point square is a pull back square, thus confirming a recent conjecture of D. Sinha. …

A classical theorem due to Quillen (1969) identifies the unitary bordism ring with the Lazard ring, which classifies the universal one-dimensional commutative formal group law. We prove an equivariant generalization of this result by identifying the homotopy theoretic $\mathbb{Z}/2$-equivariant unitary bordism ring, in…

Under certain topological assumptions, we show that two monotone Lagrangian submanifolds embedded in the standard symplectic vector space with the same monotonicity constant cannot link one another and that, individually, their smooth knot type is determined entirely by the homotopy theoretic data which classifies the …

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 construct cohomology classes in the space of knots by considering a bundle over this space and "integrating along the fiber" classes coming from the cohomology of configuration spaces using a Pontrjagin-Thom construction. The bundle we consider is essentially the one considered by Bott and Taubes, who integrated dif…

We show that the unnormalised Khovanov homology of an oriented link can be identified with the derived functors of the inverse limit. This leads to a homotopy theoretic interpretation of Khovanov homology.

These course note first provide an introduction to secondary characteristic classes and differential cohomology. They continue with a presentation of a stable homotopy theoretic approach to the theory of differential extensions of generalized cohomology theories including products and Umkehr maps.

In this paper, using exclusively homotopy theoretical methods, we study degrees of maps between $(n-2)$-connected $(2n-1)$-dimensional Poincar\' e complexes which have torsion free integral homology. Necessary and sufficient algebraic conditions for the existence of map degrees between such Poincar\' e complexes are es…

Proves Poincaré surgery theorem using homotopy theory.

By explicitly comparing constructions, we prove that the higher torsion invariants of smooth bundles defined by Igusa and Klein via Morse theory agree with the higher torsion invariants defined by Badzioch, Dorabiala, Dwyer, Weiss, and Williams using homotopy theoretical methods.

A theory of topological gravity is a homotopy-theoretic representation of the Segal-Tillmann topologification of a two-category with cobordisms as morphisms. This note describes a relatively accessible example of such a thing, suggested by the wall-crossing formulas of Donaldson theory.

The classifying spaces of cobordisms of singular maps have two fairly different constructions. We expose a homotopy theoretical connection between them. As a corollary we show that the classifying spaces in some cases have a simple product structure.

In this paper we explain how Morse theory for the Yang-Mills functional can be used to prove an analogue, for surface groups, of the Atiyah-Segal theorem. Classically, the Atiyah-Segal theorem relates the representation ring R(Γ) of a compact Lie group $Γ$ to the complex K-theory of the classifying space $BΓ$. For infi…

We construct a higher Whitehead torsion map, using algebraic K-theory of spaces, and show that it satisfies the usual properties of the classical Whitehead torsion. This is used to describe a "geometric assembly map" defined on stabilized structure spaces in purely homotopy theoretic terms.

This is a survey on known results and open problems about closed aspherical manifolds, i.e., connected closed manifolds whose universal coverings are contractible. Many examples come from certain kinds of non-positive curvature conditions. The property aspherical which is a purely homotopy theoretical condition implies…

We indicate how to combine some classical topology (Thom's work on the Steenrod problem) with some modern topology (simplicial volume) to show that every map between certain manifolds must have degree zero. We furthermore discuss a homotopy theoretic interpretation of parts of our proof, using Thom spaces and Steenrod …

This work continues the study of a homotopy-theoretic construction of the author inspired by the Bott-Taubes integrals. Bott and Taubes constructed knot invariants by integrating differential forms along the fiber of a bundle over the space of knots. Their techniques were later used by Cattaneo et al. to construct real…

To an inclusion topological groups H->G, we associate a naive G-spectrum. The special case when H=G gives the dualizing spectrum D_G introduced by the author in the first paper of this series. The main application will be to give a purely homotopy theoretic construction of Poincare embeddings in stable codimension.

We give an alternative proof of Madsen-Weiss' generalized Mumford conjecture. Our proof is based on ideas similar to Madsen-Weiss' original proof, but it is more geometrical and less homotopy theoretical in nature. At the heart of the argument is a geometric version of Harer stability, which we formulate as a theorem a…

We construct periodic families of Poincare complexes, partially solving a question of Hodgson that was posed in the proceedings of the 1982 Northwestern homotopy theory conference. We also construct infinite families of Poincare complexes whose top cell falls off after one suspension but which fail to embed in a sphere…

We discuss an universal bordism invariant obtained from the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer eta-invariant from the analytic and homotopy theoretic point of view. Classical invariants like the Adams e-invariant, $ρ$-invariants and $String$-bordism invariants are derived as special cases. The main results are a secondary index theo…

We establish a full $h-$principle ($C^0-$close, relative, parametric) for the simplification of singularities of Lagrangian and Legendrian fronts. More precisely, we prove that if there is no homotopy theoretic obstruction to simplifying the singularities of tangency of a Lagrangian or Legendrian submanifold with respe…

Study almost complex structures on six-manifolds using twistor spaces.

In this paper, we prove homological stability of symplectomorphisms and extended hamiltonians of surfaces made discrete. We construct an isomorphism from the stable homology group of symplectomorphisms and extended Hamiltonians of surfaces to the homology of certain infinite loop spaces. We use these infinite loop spac…

Let $M$ be a closed, oriented manifold of dimension $d$. Let $LM$ be the space of smooth loops in $M$. Chas and Sullivan recently defined a product on the homology $H_*(LM)$ of degree $-d$. They then investigated other structure that this product induces, including a Batalin -Vilkovisky structure, and a Lie algebra str…

Abstract: Study gyrations of sphere products and connected sums, generalizing Fico's Lemmata.

In classical fixed point and coincidence theory the notion of Nielsen numbers has proved to be extremely fruitful. Here we extend it to pairs (f_1, f_2) of maps between manifolds of arbitrary dimensions. This leads to estimates of the minimum numbers MCC(f_1, f_2) (and MC(f_1, f_2), resp.) of pathcomponents (and of poi…

In this paper we introduce a homotopy theoretic technique for proving that the $K$-theoretic assembly map is an equivalence. It is an extension of the methods used to prove split injectivity of the assembly and applies to any geometrically finite group. Our result is that there are two requirements which need to hold. …

New proofs and refined theorems on bounded cohomology.

The paper develops obstructions for embedding 2D complexes into 4D space.

We construct a model of differential K-theory, using the geometrically defined Chern forms, whose cocycles are certain equivalence classes of maps into the Grassmannians and unitary groups. In particular, we produce the circle-integration maps for these models using classical homotopy-theoretic constructions, by incorp…

Associated to each finite dimensional linear representation of a group G, there is a vector bundle over the classifying space BG. This construction was studied extensively for compact groups by Atiyah and Segal. We introduce a homotopy theoretical framework for studying the Atiyah-Segal construction in the context of i…

Two approaches study the homotopy of blow ups in algebraic and symplectic geometry.

In this paper, it is explained that a topological invariant for 3-manifold $M$ with $b_1(M)=1$ can be constructed by applying Fukaya's Morse homotopy theoretic approach for Chern--Simons perturbation theory to a local system on $M$ of rational functions associated to the free abelian covering of $M$. Our invariant take…

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…

We define homotopy-theoretic invariants of knots in prime 3-manifolds. Fix a knot J in a prime 3-manifold M. Call a knot K in M concordant to J if it cobounds a properly embedded annulus with J in MxI, and call K J-characteristic if there is a degree-one map f:M --> M throwing K onto J and mapping M-K to M-J. These inv…

The main goal of the present paper is the construction of twisted generalized differential cohomology theories and the comprehensive statement of its basic functorial properties. Technically it combines the homotopy theoretic approach to (untwisted) generalized differential cohomology developed by Hopkins-Singer and la…

The paper extends stabilization methods to Poincaré Duality complexes.

Modern differential cohomology explained with applications.

New method uses iterated integrals to bridge geometric and homotopy information.

The first author's geometric Hopf invariant of a stable map $F:Σ^{\infty}X \to Σ^{\infty}Y$ is a stable ${\mathbb Z}_2$-equivariant map $h(F):Σ^{\infty}X \to Σ^{\infty}(Y \wedge Y)$ constructed by an explicit difference construction applied to $(F \wedge F)Δ_X - Δ_Y F$. The stable ${\mathbb Z}_2$-equivariant homotopy c…

Spaces over BO are equivalent to thickened manifolds.

Homotopy theory for $(2n+1)$-dimensional manifold triads with fixed boundary.

In these lecture notes we discuss a body of work in which Morse theory is used to construct various homology and cohomology operations. In the classical setting of algebraic topology this is done by constructing a moduli space of graph flows, using homotopy theoretic methods to construct a virtual fundamental class, an…