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-complex. The decomposition is highly nonunique so cannot be used to define an invariant, but it shows the topological s-cobordism question reduces to the core case. The simply-connected version of the decomposition (with 1-complex a point) is due to Curtis, Freedman, Hsiang and Stong. Controlled surgery is used to reduce topological triviality of core s-cobordisms to a question about controlled homotopy equivalence of 4-manifolds. There are speculations about further reductions.
Some properties of non-orientable 3-manifolds are shown. The semi-group of cobordism of immersions of surfaces in such manifolds is computed and proven actually to be a group. Explicit invariants are provided.
This is primarily an exposition, combining work of several authors (Curtis, Hsiang, Freedman, Stong, Matveyev, and Bizaca), of the proof that a smooth 5-dimensional h-cobordism between simply connected 4-manifolds is a product off of a contractible piece which itself is diffeomorphic to the 5-ball.
We prove that an embedded cobordism between manifolds with boundary can be split into a sequence of right product and left product cobordisms, if the codimension of the embedding is at least two. This is a topological counterpart of the algebraic splitting theorem for embedded cobordisms of the first author, A. Nemethi and A. Ranicki. In the codimension one case, we provide a slightly weaker statement. We also give proofs of rearrangement and cancellation theorems for handles of embedded submanifolds with boundary.
Cobordism of Haken $n$-manifolds is defined by a Haken $(n+1)$-manifold $W$ whose boundary has two components, each of which is a closed Haken $n$-manifold. In addition, the inclusion map of the fundamental group of each boundary component to $π_1(W)$ is injective. In this paper we prove that there are 4-dimensional Haken cobordisms whose boundary consists of any two closed Haken 3-manifolds. In particular, each closed Haken 3-manifold is the $π_1$-injective boundary of some Haken 4-manifold.
For any oriented cusped hyperbolic $3$-manifold $M$, we study its $(R,ε)$-panted cobordism group, which is the abelian group generated by $(R,ε)$-good curves in $M$ modulo the oriented boundaries of $(R,ε)$-good pants. In particular, we prove that for sufficiently small $ε>0$ and sufficiently large $R>0$, some modified version of the $(R,ε)$-panted cobordism group of $M$ is isomorphic to $H_1(\text{SO}(M);\mathbb{Z})$.
It is known that every closed oriented 3-manifold is homology cobordant to a hyperbolic 3-manifold. By contrast we show that many homology cobordism classes contain no Seifert fibered 3-manifold. This is accomplished by determining the isomorphism type of the rational cohomology ring of all Seifert fibered 3-manifolds with no 2-torsion in their first homology. Then we exhibit families of examples of 3-manifolds (obtained by surgery on links), with fixed linking form and cohomology ring, that are not homology cobordant to any Seifert fibered space (as shown by their rational cohomology ring). T…
We fix a null-homologous, homotopically essential knot $J$ in a 3-manifold with PTFA fundamental group and study concordance of knots that are homotopic to $J$. We construct an infinite family of knots that are characteristic to $J$, and then use $L^2$-methods to show that they are not concordant to $J$.
Given a set of simplifying moves on 3-manifolds, we apply them to a given 3-manifold M as long as possible. What we get is a root of M. For us, it makes sense to consider three types of moves: compressions along 2-spheres, proper discs and proper annuli having boundary circles in different components of the boundary of M. Our main result is that for the above moves the root of any 3-manifold exists and is unique. The same result remains true if instead of manifolds we apply the moves to 3-cobordisms.
We introduce a notion of symmetric Whitney tower cobordism between bordered 3-manifolds, aiming at the study of homology cobordism and link concordance. It is motivated by the symmetric Whitney tower approach to slicing knots and links initiated by Cochran, Orr, and Teichner. We give amenable Cheeger-Gromov rho-invariant obstructions to bordered 3-manifolds being Whitney tower cobordant. Our obstruction is related to and generalizes several prior known results, and also gives new interesting cases. As an application, our method applied to link exteriors reveals new structures on (Whitney tower…
We establish a structural understanding of the involutive Heegaard Floer homology for all linear combinations of almost-rational (AR) plumbed three-manifolds. We use this to show that the Neumann-Siebenmann invariant is a homology cobordism invariant for all linear combinations of AR plumbed homology spheres. As a corollary, we prove that if $Y$ is a linear combination of AR plumbed homology spheres with $μ(Y) = 1$, then $Y$ is not torsion in the homology cobordism group. A general computation of the involutive Heegaard Floer correction terms for these spaces is also included.
This paper continues our exploration of homology cobordism of 3-manifolds using our recent results on Cheeger-Gromov rho-invariants associated to amenable representations. We introduce a new type of torsion in 3-manifold groups we call hidden torsion, and an algebraic approximation we call local hidden torsion. We construct infinitely many hyperbolic 3-manifolds which have local hidden torsion in the transfinite lower central subgroup. By realizing Cheeger-Gromov invariants over amenable groups, we show that our hyperbolic 3-manifolds are not pairwise homology cobordant, yet remain indistingui…
A major challenge in the study of the structure of the three-dimensional homology cobordism group is to understand the interaction between hyperbolic geometry and homology cobordism. In this paper, for a hyperbolic homology sphere $Y$ we derive explicit bounds on the relative grading between irreducible solutions to the Seiberg-Witten equations and the reducible one in terms of the spectral and Riemannian geometry of $Y$. Using this, we provide explicit bounds on some numerical invariants arising in monopole Floer homology (and its $\mathrm{Pin}(2)$-equivariant refinement). We apply this to st…
We investigate rational homology cobordisms of 3-manifolds with non-zero first Betti number. This is motivated by the natural generalization of the slice-ribbon conjecture to multicomponent links. In particular we consider the problem of which rational homology $S^1\times S^2$'s bound rational homology $S^1\times D^3$'s. We give a simple procedure to construct rational homology cobordisms between plumbed 3-manifold. We introduce a family F of plumbed 3-manifolds with first Betti number equal to 1. By adapting an obstruction based on Donaldson's diagonalization theorem we characterize all manif…
We extend the theory of relative trisections of smooth, compact, oriented $4$-manifolds with connected boundary given by Gay and Kirby to include $4$-manifolds with an arbitrary number of boundary components. Additionally, we provide sufficient conditions under which relatively trisected $4$-manifolds can be glued to one another along diffeomorphic boundary components so as to induce a trisected manifold. These two results allow us to define a category $\textrm{Tri}$ whose objects are smooth, closed, oriented $3$-manifolds equipped with open book decompositions, and morphisms are relatively tr…
We give complete geometric invariants of cobordisms of fold maps with oriented singular set and cobordisms of even codimensional fold maps. These invariants are given in terms of cobordisms of stably framed manifolds and cobordisms of immersions with prescribed normal bundles defined by the author in his earlier works.
A generic smooth map of a closed $2k$-manifold into $(3k-1)$-space has a finite number of cusps ($Σ^{1,1}$-singularities). We determine the possible numbers of cusps of such maps. A fold map is a map with singular set consisting of only fold singularities ($Σ^{1,0}$-singularities). Two fold maps are fold bordant if there are cobordisms between their source- and target manifolds with a fold map extending the two maps between the boundaries, if the two targets agree and the target cobordism can be taken as a product with a unit interval then the maps are fold cobordant. We compute the cobordism …
We give complete geometric invariants of cobordisms of framed fold maps. These invariants consist of two types. We take the immersion of the fold singular set into the target manifold together with information about non-triviality of the normal bundle of the singular set in the source manifold. These invariants were introduced in the author's earlier works. Secondly we take the induced stable partial framing on the source manifold whose cobordisms were studied in general by Koschorke. We show that these invariants describe completely the cobordism groups of framed fold maps into R^n. Then we a…
The smooth rational homology cobordism group of rational homology three spheres, T, contains subgroups T_p generated by 3-manifolds with first homology p-torsion, where p is a prime. Rochlin's theorem and gauge theoretic methods show that the inclusion of the direct sum of the T_p into T has infinitely generated kernel. We use Heegaard-Floer methods to show that the cokernel is infinitely generated. On the level of Witt groups of linking forms and conjecturally in the topological category, the inclusion is an isomorphism. One application is the demonstration of the failure in dimension three o…
We compute the oriented cobordism group of fold maps of 4-manifolds into the space with all the possible restrictions (and also with no restriction) to the singular fibers. We also give geometric invariants which describe completely the cobordism group of fold maps.
Let P be a connected smooth p-manifold. We describe the group of all cobordism classes of smooth maps of n-manifolds to P with singularities of a given $cal K$-invariant class in terms of certain stable homotopy groups by applying the relative homotopy principle on the existence level. We also deal with the oriented version and construct a classifying space to which this oriented cobordism group is represented as the set of homotopy classes of P in the codimension n<p and n\geqq p\geqq 2.
We show that the number of double points of smoothly immersed 2-spheres representing certain homology classes of an oriented, smooth, closed, simply-connected 4-manifold X must increase with the complexity of corresponding h-cobordisms from X to X. As an application, we give results restricting the minimal number of double points of immersed spheres in manifolds homeomorphic to rational surfaces.
The boundary of a Möbius manifold carries a canonical Möbius structure. This enables one to define the cobordism group of $n$-dimensional (closed) Möbius manifolds. The purpose of this note is to show that the cobordism group of Möbius circles is zero, i.e., every Möbius circle bounds a Möbius surface. We also complete N. Kuiper's classification of projective structures on $S^1$ (we show that there are in fact two series of projective circles with parabolic holonomy, and not one).
In this paper, we introduce a category of graded commutative rings with certain algebraic morphisms, to investigate the cobordism category of plumbed 3-manifolds. In particular, we define a non-associative distributive algebra that gives necessary conditions for an abstract morphism between the homologies of two plumbed 3-manifolds to be realized geometrically by a cobordism. Here we also consider the homology cobordism monoid, and give a necessary condition using w-invariants for the homology 3-spheres to belong to the inertia group associated to some homology 3-spheres.
It has been a central open problem in Heegaard Floer theory whether cobordisms of links induce homomorphisms on the associated link Floer homology groups. We provide an affirmative answer by introducing a natural notion of cobordism between sutured manifolds, and showing that such a cobordism induces a map on sutured Floer homology. This map is a common generalization of the hat version of the closed 3-manifold cobordism map in Heegaard Floer theory, and the contact gluing map defined by Honda, Kazez, and Matić. We show that sutured Floer homology, together with the above cobordism maps, forms…
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 modified surgery theory of Kreck, we give an $s$-cobordism classification for certain $4$-manifolds with fundamental group $π$, such that cd $π\leq 2$.
We introduce a generalization of oriented tangles, which are still called tangles, so that they are in one-to-one correspondence with the sutured manifolds. We define cobordisms between sutured manifolds (tangles) by generalizing cobordisms between oriented tangles. For every commutative algebra A over Z/2Z, we define A-Tangles to be the category consisting of A-tangles, which are balanced tangles with A-colorings of the tangle strands and fixed SpinC structures, and A-cobordisms as morphisms. An A-cobordism is a cobordism with a compatible A-coloring and an affine set of SpinC structures. Ass…
In this note we classify the diffeomorphism classes rel. boundary of smooth h-cobordisms between two fixed 1-connected 4-manifolds in terms of isometries between the intersection forms.
Let $N$ and $P$ be smooth closed manifolds of dimensions $n$ and $p$ respectively. Given a Thom-Boardman symbol $I$, a smooth map $f:N\to P$ is called an $Ω^{I}$-regular map if and only if the Thom-Boardman symbol of each singular point of $f$ is not greater than $I$ in the lexicographic order. We will represent the group of all cobordism classes of $Ω^{I}$-regular maps of $n$-dimensional closed manifolds into $P$ in terms of certain stable homotopy groups. As an application we will study the relationship among the stable homotopy groups of spheres, the above cobordism group and higher singula…
We prove that the stable moduli space of $(n-1)$-connected, $n$-parallelizable, $(2n+1)$-dimensional manifolds is homology equivalent to an infinite loopspace for $n \geq 4, n \neq 7$. The main novel ingredient is a version of the cobordism category incorporating surgery data in the form of Lagrangian subspaces.
Given a smooth, compact four-manifold $X$ viewed as a cobordism from the empty set to its connected boundary, we demonstrate how to use the data of a trisection map $π:X^{4} \to \mathbb{D}^{2}$ to compute the induced cobordism maps on Heegaard Floer homology associated to $X$.
The cobordism group $N(M^n)$ of codimension-one immersions in the $n$-manifold $M^n$ has a natural filtration induced by any cellular decomposition. The problem addressed in this paper is the explicit computation of the graded group $gr^*N(M^n)$. We introduce some new invariants for immersions enlightening the Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence associated to $N(M)$, which are of combinatorial-geometric nature. Explicit computations are developed for $n\leq7$, and the group structure is also investigated for orientable 4-manifolds.
Galatius, Madsen, Tillmann and Weiss have identified the homotopy type of the classifying space of the cobordism category with objects (d-1)-dimensional manifolds embedded in R^\infty. In this paper we apply the techniques of spaces of manifolds, as developed by the author and Galatius, to identify the homotopy type of the cobordism category with objects (d-1)-dimensional submanifolds of a fixed background manifold M. There is a description in terms of a space of sections of a bundle over M associated to its tangent bundle. This can be interpreted as a form of Poincare duality, relating a spac…
The purpose of this note is to show that classical cobordism arguments, which go back to the pioneering works of Mandelbaum and Moishezon, provide quick and unified proofs of any knot surgered compact simply-connected 4-manifold X_K becoming diffeomorphic to X after a single stabilization by connected summing with S^2 x S^2 or CP^2 # -CP^2, and almost complete decomposability of X_K for many almost completely decomposable X, such as the elliptic surfaces.
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 smoothly a product. We explain how the conjecture fits naturally into the program of Taubes of constructing symplectic structures on an oriented smooth 4-manifold from generic self-dual harmonic forms. The paper also contains an auxiliary result of independent interest, which generaliz…
We consider the topological category of $h$-cobordisms between manifolds with boundary and compare its homotopy type with the standard $h$-cobordism space of a compact smooth manifold.
This paper deals with the question of J.Morava on existence of canonical complex cobordism class of singular submanifold. We present several solutions of this question for $X_r(ξ)$ -- the set of points where $\dimξ-r+1$ generic sections of a complex vector bundle $ξ$ are linearly dependent. The corresponding complex cobordism classes $Q_r(ξ)$ and $P_r(ξ)$ tend to have many nice properties, such as deformed sum formula, but they don't coincide with Chern classes $c_r^U(ξ)$. They also have relation to the theory of $IH$-small resolutions.
For a given list of closed manifolds $Σ_k=(P_1,...,P_k)$, we construct a cobordism category $\mathbf{Cob}_{d}^{Σ_{k}}$ of embedded manifolds with Baas-Sullivan singularities of type $Σ_k$. Our main results identify the homotopy type of the classifying spaces $B\mathbf{Cob}_{d}^{Σ_{k}}$ of these cobordism categories with that of the infinite loop-space of a certain spectrum, $\mathsf{MT}_{Σ_{k}}(d)$. Our results generalize of the work of Galatius, Madsen, Tillmann, and Weiss from arXiv:math/0605249. It also generalizes the work of Genauer on the cobordism categories of manifolds with corners fr…
We construct four-dimensional symplectic cobordisms between contact three-manifolds generalizing an example of Eliashberg. One key feature is that any handlebody decomposition of one of these cobordisms must involve three-handles. The other key feature is that these cobordisms contain chains of symplectically embedded two-spheres of square zero. This, together with standard gauge theory, is used to show that any contact three-manifold of non-zero torsion (in the sense of Giroux) cannot be strongly symplectically fillable. John Etnyre pointed out to the author that the same argument together wi…
For a fixed closed manifold $P$, we construct a cobordism category of embedded manifolds with a single Baas-Sullivan singularity of type $P$. Our main theorem identifies the homotopy type of the classifying space of this cobordism category with that of the infinite loop-space of a certain spectrum related to the spectrum $\text{MT}(d)$ introduced in [arXiv:math/0605249]. We obtain an analogue of the Bockstein-Sullivan exact couple that arises between the classical bordism theories $MO$ and $MO_{P}$ on the level of cobordism categories.
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 extension is a semi-direct product. We then use this reverse to the plus construction to produce uncountably many different one-ended manifolds called pseudo-collars, which are stackings of semi-s- cobordisms. We finally display a technique for producing "nice" one-ended open mani…
The contact invariant is an element in the monopole Floer homology groups of an oriented closed three manifold canonically associated to a given contact structure. A non-vanishing contact invariant implies that the original contact structure is tight, so understanding its behavior under symplectic cobordisms is of interest if one wants to further exploit this property. By extending the gluing argument of Mrowka and Rollin to the case of a manifold with a cylindrical end, we will show that the contact invariant behaves naturally under a strong symplectic cobordism. As quick applications of the …
We show that the pre-order defined on the category of contact manifolds by arbitrary symplectic cobordisms is considerably less rigid than its counterparts for exact or Stein cobordisms: in particular, we exhibit large new classes of contact 3-manifolds which are symplectically cobordant to something overtwisted, or to the tight 3-sphere, or which admit symplectic caps containing symplectically embedded spheres with vanishing self-intersection. These constructions imply new and simplified proofs of several recent results involving fillability, planarity and non-separating contact type embeddin…
In this note we make several observations concerning symplectic cobordisms. Among other things we show that every contact 3-manifold has infinitely many concave symplectic fillings and that all overtwisted contact 3-manifolds are ``symplectic cobordism equivalent.''
Using methods inspired from algebraic $K$-theory, we give a new proof of the Genauer fibration sequence, relating the cobordism categories of closed manifolds with cobordism categories of manifolds with boundaries, and of the Bökstedt-Madsen delooping of the cobordism category. Unlike the existing proofs, this approach generalizes to other cobordism-like categories of interest. Indeed we argue that the Genauer fibration sequence is an analogue, in the setting of cobordism categories, of Waldhausen's Additivity theorem in algebraic $K$-theory.
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 surgery problem gives rise to a collection of capped gropes that fit in the framework of control theory.
In this paper, we develop a geometric procedure for producing a reverse to Quillen's plus construction, a construction called a 1-sided h-cobordism or semi-h-cobordism. We then use this reverse to the plus construction to produce uncountably many distinct ends of manifolds called pseudo-collars, which are stackings of 1-sided h-cobordisms. Each of our pseudo-collars has the same boundary and pro-homology systems at infinity and similar group-theoretic properties for their pro-fundamental group systems at infinity. In particular, the kernel group of each group extension for each 1-sided h-cobor…
The main result of this paper is that any $3$-dimensional manifold with a finite group action is equivariantly, invertibly homology cobordant to a hyperbolic manifold; this result holds with suitable twisted coefficients as well. The following two consequences motivated this work. First, there are hyperbolic equivariant corks (as defined in previous work of the authors) for a wide class of finite groups. Second, any finite group that acts on a homology $3$-sphere also acts on a hyperbolic homology $3$-sphere. The theorem has other applications, including establishing the existence of an infini…
We give a sufficient and necessary condition of the fundamental group homomorphism of a map between manifolds to induce homology equivalences. Moreover, a classification of one-sided h-cobordism of manifolds up to diffeomorphisms is obtained, based on Quillen's plus construction with Whitehead torsions.
We consider compact homogeneous spaces G/H of positive Euler characteristic endowed with an invariant almost complex structure J and the canonical action θof the maximal torus T ^{k} on G/H. We obtain explicit formula for the cobordism class of such manifold through the weights of the action θat the identity fixed point eH by an action of the quotient group W_G/W_H of the Weyl groups for G and H. In this way we show that the cobordism class for such manifolds can be computed explicitly without information on their cohomology. We also show that formula for cobordism class provides an explicit w…
