arXiv research

This article analyzes the interplay between symplectic geometry in dimension four and the invariants for smooth four-manifolds constructed using holomorphic triangles introduced in math.SG/0110169. Specifically, we establish a non-vanishing result for the invariants of symplectic four-manifolds, which leads to new proo…

In this paper, we demonstrate a relation among Seiberg-Witten invariants which arises from embedded surfaces in four-manifolds whose self-intersection number is negative. These relations, together with Taubes' basic theorems on the Seiberg-Witten invariants of symplectic manifolds, are then used to prove the symplectic…

Study infinite symplectic forms on ruled surfaces.

In this paper we classify symplectic Lefschetz fibrations (with empty base locus) on a four-manifold which is the product of a three-manifold with a circle. This result provides further evidence in support of the following conjecture regarding symplectic structures on such a four-manifold: if the product of a three-man…

We prove that the minimal Euler characteristic of a closed symplectic four-manifold with given fundamental group is often much larger than the minimal Euler characteristic of almost complex closed four-manifolds with the same fundamental group. In fact, the difference between the two is arbitrarily large for certain gr…

We prove that a positive definite smooth four-manifold with $b_2^+ \geq 2$ and having either no 1-handles or no 3-handles cannot admit a symplectic structure.

This is an exposition of the Donaldson geometric flow on the space of symplectic forms on a closed smooth four-manifold, representing a fixed cohomology class. The original work appeared in [1].

We prove that all minimal symplectic four-manifolds are essentially irreducible. We also clarify the relationship between holomorphic and symplectic minimality of Kähler surfaces. This leads to a new proof of the deformation-invariance of holomorphic minimality for complex surfaces with even first Betti number which ar…

Almost toric manifolds form a class of singular Lagrangian fibered symplectic manifolds that is a natural generalization of toric manifolds. Notable examples include the K3 surface, the phase space of the spherical pendulum and rational balls useful for symplectic surgeries. The main result of the paper is a complete c…

We prove a Freed-Uhlenbeck style generic smoothness theorem for the moduli space of solutions to the Vafa--Witten equations on a closed symplectic four-manifold by using a method developed by Feehan for the study of the $PU(2)$-monopole equations on smooth closed four-manifolds. We introduce a set of perturbation terms…

We exhibit many examples of closed symplectic manifolds on which there is an autonomous Hamiltonian whose associated flow has no nonconstant periodic orbits (the only previous explicit example in the literature was the torus T^2n (n\geq 2) with an irrational symplectic structure). The underlying smooth manifolds of our…

This paper introduces two-dimensional diagrams that are slight generalizations of moment map images for toric four-manifolds and catalogs techniques for reading topological and symplectic properties of a symplectic four-manifold from these diagrams. The paper offers a purely topological approach to toric manifolds as w…

This research proves a topological inequality for symplectic four-manifolds using non-Abelian monopoles.

We extend a result of M. Katz on conformal systoles to all four-manifolds with b^+=1 which have odd intersection form. The same result holds for all four-manifolds with b^+=1 with even intersection form and which are symplectic or satisfy the so-called 5/4-conjecture.

We show that every closed symplectic four-dimensional manifold admits compatible almost Kaehler metrics of negative scalar curvature.

We prove that many simply connected symplectic four-manifolds dissolve after connected sum with only one copy of $S^{2}\times S^{2}$. For any finite group G that acts freely on the three-sphere we construct closed smooth four-manifolds with fundamental group G which do not admit metrics of positive scalar curvature, bu…

We show that every smooth closed oriented four-manifold admits a decomposition into two co- dimension zero submanifolds with common boundary. Each of these submanifolds carries a structure of a symplectic manifold with pseudo-convex boundary. This imply, in particular, that every smooth closed simply-connected four-man…

We show that hyperelliptic symplectic Lefschetz fibrations are symplectically birational to two-fold covers of rational ruled surfaces, branched in a symplectically embedded surface. This reduces the classification of genus 2 fibrations to the classification of certain symplectic submanifolds in rational ruled surfaces…

In this note we show that the Lagrangian Luttinger surgery preserves the symplectic Kodaira dimension. Some constraints on Lagrangian tori in symplectic four manifolds with non-positive Kodaira dimension are also derived.

We introduce a symplectic structure on the space of connections in a G-principal bundle over a four-manifold and the Hamiltonian action on it of the group of gauge transformations which are trivial on the boundary. The symplectic reduction becomes the moduli space of flat connections over the manifold. On the moduli sp…

We construct an infinite family of homologous, non-isotopic, symplectic surfaces of any genus greater than one in a certain class of closed, simply connected, symplectic four-manifolds. Our construction is the first example of this phenomenon for surfaces of genus greater than one.

The paper was withdrawn due to a gap in the proof of Lemma 3.

We construct a smooth codimension-one foliation on the five-sphere in which every leaf is a symplectic four-manifold and such that the symplectic structure varies smoothly. Our construction implies the existence of a complete regular Poisson structure on the five-sphere.

This paper proves that on any tamed closed almost complex four-manifold $(M,J)$ whose dimension of $J$-anti-invariant cohomology is equal to the self-dual second Betti number minus one, there exists a new symplectic form compatible with the given almost complex structure $J$. In particular, if the self-dual second Bett…

Four-manifold theory is employed to study the existence of (twisted) generalized complex structures. It is shown that there exist (twisted) generalized complex structures that have more than one type change loci. In an example-driven fashion, (twisted) generalized complex structures are constructed on a myriad of four-…

We study almost Hermitian 4-manifolds with holonomy algebra, for the canonical Hermitian connection, of dimension at most one. We show how Riemannian 4-manifolds admitting five orthonormal symplectic forms fit therein and classify them. In this set-up we also fully describe almost Kaehler 4-manifolds.

We continue our program initiated in [arXiv:0912.4261] to consider supersymmetric surface operators in a topologically-twisted N=2 pure SU(2) gauge theory, and apply them to the study of four-manifolds and related invariants. Elegant physical proofs of various seminal theorems in four-manifold theory obtained by Ozsvat…

This paper shows that there are symplectic four-manifolds M with the following property: a single isotopy class of smooth embedded two-spheres in M contains infinitely many Lagrangian submanifolds, no two of which are isotopic as Lagrangian submanifolds. The examples are constructed using a special class of symplectic …

We establish a new criterion for a compatible almost complex structure on a symplectic four-manifold to be integrable and hence Kähler. Our main theorem shows that the existence of three linearly independent closed J-anti-invariant two-forms implies the integrability of the almost complex structure. This proves the con…

In a pair of papers, we construct invariants for smooth four-manifolds equipped with `broken fibrations' - the singular Lefschetz fibrations of Auroux, Donaldson and Katzarkov - generalising the Donaldson-Smith invariants for Lefschetz fibrations. The `Lagrangian matching invariants' are designed to be comparable with …

Previously, Cristofaro-Gardiner, Hutchings and Ramos have proved that embedded contact homology (ECH) capacities can recover the volume of a contact 3-manifod in their paper "the asymptotics of ECH capacities" . There were two main steps to proving this theorem: The first step used an estimate for the energy of min-max…

We prove that closed symplectic four-manifolds do not admit any smooth free circle actions with contractible orbits, without assuming that the actions preserve the symplectic forms. In higher dimensions such actions by symplectomorphisms do exist, and we give explicit examples based on a construction of Fernandez, Gray…

We give examples of symplectic actions of a cyclic group, inducing a trivial action on homology, on four-manifolds that admit Hamiltonian circle actions, and show that they do not extend to Hamiltonian circle actions. Our work applies holomorphic methods to extend combinatorial tools developed for circle actions to stu…

Modulo trivial exceptions, we show that smoothly nontrivial symplectic sums of symplectic 4-manifolds along surfaces of positive genus are never rational or ruled, and we enumerate each case in which they have Kodaira dimension zero (i.e., are blowups of symplectic 4-manifolds with torsion canonical class). In particul…

We study topological properties of log-symplectic structures and produce examples of compact manifolds with such structures. Notably we show that several symplectic manifolds do not admit log-symplectic structures and several log-symplectic manifolds do not admit symplectic structures, for example #m CP^2 # n bar(CP^2)…

We define a general class of elliptic equations for 2-forms on 4-manifolds, of which the complex Monge-Ampere equation is a prototype. We obtain some regularity results and discuss various connections (some speculative) with modern symplectic 4-manifold theory.

The study proves conditions for symplectic torus actions on manifolds with non-contractible orbits.

The paper tackles isotropy of symplectic forms using Hodge flows.

New proof for 4D symplectic manifolds: equivariant cohomology determines diffeotype.

It is shown that an embedded Lagrangian Klein bottle represents a non-trivial mod 2 homology class in a compact symplectic four-manifold $(X,ω)$ with $c_1(X)\cdot[ω]>0$. (In versions 1 and 2, the last assumption was missing. A counterexample to this general claim and the first proof of the corrected result have been fo…

Let (M, ω) be a compact symplectic 4-manifold with a compatible almost complex structure J. The problem of finding a J-compatible symplectic form with prescribed volume form is an almost-Kähler analogue of Yau's theorem and is connected to a programme in symplectic topology proposed by Donaldson. We call the correspond…

We prove that the Calabi-Yau equation can be solved on the Kodaira-Thurston manifold for all given $T^2$-invariant volume forms. This provides support for Donaldson's conjecture that Yau's theorem has an extension to symplectic four-manifolds with compatible but non-integrable almost complex structures.

Metrics of exceptional holonomy are vacuum solutions to the Einstein equation. In this paper we describe manifolds with holonomy contained in Spin(7) preserved by a three-torus symmetry in terms of tri-symplectic geometry of four-manifolds. These complement examples that have appeared in the context of domain wall prob…

Let $M$ be a closed, connected, orientable topological four-manifold with $H_1(M)$ nontrivial and free abelian, $b_2(M)\ne 0, 2$, and $χ(M)\ne 0$. We show that if $G$ is a finite group of 2-rank $\le 1$ which admits a homologically trivial, locally linear, effective action on $M$, then $G$ must be cyclic. With addition…

We introduce filtered cohomologies of differential forms on symplectic manifolds. They generalize and include the cohomologies discussed in Paper I and II as a subset. The filtered cohomologies are finite-dimensional and can be associated with differential elliptic complexes. Algebraically, we show that the filtered co…

Let Σbe a compact oriented surface immersed in a four dimensional Kähler-Einstein manifold M. We consider the evolution of Σin the direction of its mean curvature vector. It is proved that being symplectic is preserved along the flow and the flow does not develop type I singularity. When M has two parallel Kähler forms…

We prove the local existence of unique smooth solutions of the Donaldson geometric flow on the space of symplectic forms on a closed smooth four-manifold, representing a fixed cohomology class. It is a semiflow on the Besov space $B^{1,p}_2(M, Λ^2)$ for $p > 4$. The Donaldson geometric flow was introduced by Simon Dona…

On a compact oriented four-manifold with an orientation preserving involution c, we count solutions of Seiberg-Witten equations, which are moreover symmetrical in relation to c, to construct "real" Seiberg-Witten invariants. Using Taubes' results, we prove that on a symplectic almost complex manifold with an antisymple…