arXiv research

The article examines how many stabilizations are needed to transform 5D s-cobordisms into product cobordisms.

We show how Latour's theorem can be understood as a natural generalization of the $s$-cobordism theorem for cohomology classes $u\in H^1(M;\mathbb{R})$. The $s$-cobordism theorem becomes a special degenerate case when $u=0$.

The main result is that an s-cobordism (topological or smooth) of 4-manifolds has a product structure outside a ``core'' sub s-cobordism. These cores are arranged to have quite a bit of structure, for example they are smooth and abstractly (forgetting boundary structure) diffeomorphic to a standard neighborhood of a 1-…

The aim of this paper is to give an $s$-cobordism classification of topological $4$-manifolds in terms of the standard invariants using the group of homotopy self-equivalences. Hambleton and Kreck constructed a braid to study the group of homotopy self-equivalences of $4$-manifolds. Using this braid together with the m…

The study explores conditions for $h$-cobordisms between smooth 4-manifolds.

The main result of this paper states that a symplectic s-cobordism of elliptic 3-manifolds is diffeomorphic to a product (assuming a canonical contact structure on the boundary). Based on this theorem, we conjecture that a smooth s-cobordism of elliptic 3-manifolds is smoothly a product if its universal cover is smooth…

In this paper we show that for a large class C of 4-manifolds each member of C has only finitely many simple homotopy type upto s-cobordism. This result generalizes a similar result of Hillman for certain complex surfaces. We also present a correction in the proof of Hillman's result.

In this paper, we recall Quillen's plus construction for high-dimensional smooth manifolds and the solution to the group extension problem. We then develop a geometric procedure due for producing a "reverse" to the plus construction, a one-sided s-cobordism called a semi-s-cobordism, when the total group of the group e…

The disk embedding lemma is a technique underlying the topological classification results in 4-manifold topology for good fundamental groups. The purpose of this paper is to develop new tools for disk embedding that work up to s-cobordism, without restrictions on the fundamental group. As an application we show that a …

In 1987 S Cappell and J Shaneson constructed an s-cobordism H from the quaternionic 3-manifold Q to itself, and asked whether H or any of its covers are trivial product cobordism? In this paper we study H, and in particular show that its 8-fold cover is the product cobordism from S^3 to itself. We reduce the triviality…

The h-cobordism theorem is a noted theorem in differential and PL topology. A generalization of the h-cobordism theorem for possibly non simply connected manifolds is the so called s-cobordism theorem. In this paper, we prove semialgebraic and Nash versions of these theorems. That is, starting with semialgebraic or Nas…

We interpret heterotic M-theory in terms of h-cobordism, that is the eleven-manifold is a product of the ten-manifold times an interval is translated into a statement that the former is a cobordism of the latter which is a homtopy equivalence. In the non-simply connected case, which is important for model building, the…

The paper classifies homotopy ribbon discs with specific groups.

Study topological 4-manifolds with specific fundamental groups.

New invariant for classifying 4-manifolds up to cobordism.

We present a new, more elementary proof of the Freedman-Teichner result that the geometric classification techniques (surgery, s-cobordism, and pseudoisotopy) hold for topological 4-manifolds with groups of subexponential growth. In an appendix Freedman and Teichner give a correction to their original proof, and reform…

We present the Round Handle Problem, proposed by Freedman and Krushkal. It asks whether a collection of links, which contains the Generalised Borromean Rings, are slice in a 4-manifold R constructed from adding round handles to the four ball. A negative answer would contradict the union of the surgery conjecture and th…

Closed oriented 4-manifolds with the same geometrically 2-dimensional fundamental group (satisfying certain properties) are classified up to $s$-cobordism by their $w_2$-type, equivariant intersection form and the Kirby-Siebenmann invariant. As an application, we obtain a complete homeomorphism classification of closed…

Gluck twists on spheres yield equivalent 4-manifolds under certain conditions.

We prove that any minimal weak symplectic filling of the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of a nonorientable closed surface other than the real projective plane is s-cobordant rel boundary to the disk cotangent bundle of the surface. If the nonorientable surface is the Klein bottle, then we show…

We show that any 3-dimensional homotopy lens space M^3 that is simple-homotopy equivalent to a lens space L(p,q) is topologically s-cobordant to the lens space. It follows that M has the same multi-signature as L(p,q) and the action of π_1(M) on the universal cover of M embeds in an orthogonal action on S^7.

A smooth five-dimensional s-cobordism becomes a smooth product if stabilized by a finite number n of $S^2xS^2x[0,1]$'s. We show that for amenable fundamental groups, the minimal n is subextensive in covers, i.e., n(cover)/index(cover) has limit 0. We focus on the notion of sweepout width, which is a bridge between 4-di…

Explains Khovanov homology and its applications.

We show, up to h-cobordism, that the existence and uniqueness of connected sum decompositions of oriented 4-dimensional manifolds is an invariant of homotopy equivalence, assuming that the fundamental group of each summand is "good" in the sense of Freedman and Quinn. On a separate note, we observe that the Borel Conje…

Guilbault and author prove sufficient conditions for $\mathcal{Z}$-compactifiability of certain manifolds.

We give two constructions of surfaces in simply-connected 4-manifolds with non simply-connected complements. One is an iteration of the twisted rim surgery introduced by the first author. We also construct, for any group G satisfying some simple conditions, a simply-connected symplectic manifold containing a symplectic…

New findings show infinitely many knots cannot be smoothly round handle slices.

We provide a unified framework for proving Reidemeister-invariance and functoriality for a wide range of link homology theories. These include Lee homology, Heegaard Floer homology of branched double covers, singular instanton homology, and \Szabo's geometric link homology theory. We follow Baldwin, Hedden, and Lobb (a…

The purpose of the present paper is to prove existence of super-exponentially many compact orientable hyperbolic arithmetic $n$-manifolds that are geometric boundaries of compact orientable hyperbolic $(n+1)$-manifolds, for any $n \geq 2$, thereby establishing that these classes of manifolds have the same growth rate w…

We classify closed, topological spin$^+$ 4-manifolds with fundamental group $π$ of cohomological dimension $\leq 3$ (up to s-cobordism), after stabilization by connected sum with at most $b_3(π)$ copies of $S^2\times S^2$. In general we must also assume that $π$ also satisfies certain K-theory and assembly map conditio…

The monoids l_{2q+1}(Z[π]) detect s-cobordisms amongst certain bordisms between stably diffeomorphic 2q-dimensional manifolds and generalise the Wall simple surgery obstruction groups, L_{2q+1}^s(Z[π]) \subset l_{2q+1}(Z[π]). In this paper we give exact sequences which completely describe l_{2q+1}(Z[π]) as a set and wh…

We give a survey of geometric approaches to the topological 4-dimensional surgery and 5-dimensional s-cobordism conjectures, with a focus on the study of surfaces in 4-manifolds. The geometric lemma underlying these conjectures is a statement about smooth immersions of disks and of certain 2-complexes, capped gropes, i…

Two smooth manifolds M and N are called R-diffeomorphic if their product with the real line are diffeomorphic. We consider the following simplification problem: does R-diffeomorphism imply diffeomorphism or homeomorphism? For compact manifolds, analysis of this problem relies on some of the main achievements of the the…

We study the topology of exact and Stein fillings of the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of a closed surface $Σ_g$, where $g$ is at least 2. In particular, we prove a uniqueness theorem asserting that any Stein filling must be s-cobordant rel boundary to the disk cotangent bundle of $Σ_g$. For …

Our main result is a generalization of Cappell's 5-dimensional splitting theorem. As an application, we analyze, up to internal s-cobordism, the smoothable splitting and fibering problems for certain 5-manifolds mapping to the circle. For example, these maps may have homotopy fibers which are in the class of finite con…

We introduce a collection of 1/2-$π_1$-null 4-dimensional surgery problems. This is an intermediate notion between the classically studied universal surgery models and the $π_1$-null kernels which are known to admit a solution in the topological category. Using geometric applications of the group-theoretic 2-Engel rela…

The main purpose of this paper is to summarize the basic ingredients, illustrated with examples, of a pseudoholomorphic curve theory for symplectic 4-orbifolds. These are extensions of relevant work of Gromov, McDuff and Taubes on symplectic 4-manifolds concerning pseudoholomorphic curves and Seiberg-Witten theory. The…

We reconsider the su(3) link homology theory defined by Khovanov in math.QA/0304375 and generalized by Mackaay and Vaz in math.GT/0603307. With some slight modifications, we describe the theory as a map from the planar algebra of tangles to a planar algebra of (complexes of) `cobordisms with seams' (actually, a `canopo…

We compute the Khovanov lasagna module of S²×S², confirming a conjecture.

We extend Bar-Natan's cobordism based categorification of the Jones polynomial to virtual links. Our topological complex allows a direct extension of the classical Khovanov complex ($h=t=0$), the variant of Lee ($h=0,t=1$) and other classical link homologies. We show that our construction allows, over rings of characte…

By a Morse function on a compact manifold with boundary we mean a real-valued function without critical points near the boundary such that its critical points as well as the critical points of its restriction to the boundary are all non-degenerate. For such Morse functions, Saeki and Yamamoto have previously defined a …

Khovanov homology for pro-tangles and spectral sequences

Gluing two manifolds M_1 and M_2 with a common boundary S yields a closed manifold M. Extending to formal linear combinations x=Sum_i(a_i M_i) yields a sesquilinear pairing p=<,> with values in (formal linear combinations of) closed manifolds. Topological quantum field theory (TQFT) represents this universal pairing p …

The paper refines Mather-Thurston theorems for flat connections in manifolds.

This thesis splits into two major parts. The connection between the two parts is the notion of "categorification" which we shortly explain/recall in the introduction. In the first part of this thesis we extend Bar-Natan's cobordism based categorification of the Jones polynomial to virtual links. Our topological complex…