In this paper, we give the sharp estimates for the degree of symmetry and the semi-simple degree of symmetry of certain four dimensional fiber bundles by virtue of the rigidity theorem of harmonic maps due to Schoen and Yau. As a corollary of this estimate, we compute the degree of symmetry and the semi-simple degree of symmetry of ${\Bbb C}P^2\times V$, where $V$ is closed smooth manifold admitting a real analytic Riemannian metric of non-positive curvature. In addition, by the Albanese map, we obtain the sharp estimate of the degree of symmetry of a compact smooth manifold with some restrictions on its one dimensional cohomology.
In this paper, we investigate existence of inequivalent smooth structures on closed smooth non-orientable 4-manifolds building upon results of Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson, Fintushel-Stern, Gompf, and Stolz. We add to the number of known constructions and provide new examples of exotic manifolds that are obtained as an application of Gluck twists to the standard smooth structure. Inspection of the smooth structure on the oriented 2-covers yields existence results of orientation-reversing exotic free involutions.
We establish conditions for a continuous map of nonzero degree between a smooth closed manifold and a negatively curved manifold of dimension greater than four to be homotopic to a smooth cover, and in particular a diffeomorphism when the degree is one. The conditions hold when the volumes or entropy-volumes of the two manifolds differ by less than a uniform constant after an appropriate normalization of the metrics. The results are qualitatively sharp in the sense that the dependencies are necessary. We give a number of corollaries.
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…
A theorem on the existence of the unique minimal topologic handle decomposition of differentiable simply connected five-dimensional manifolds is proved. For a decomposition of this sort, the number of handles of each index is given.
We show that the set of even positive definite lattices that arise from smooth, simply-connected 4-manifolds bounded by a fixed homology 3-sphere can depend on more than the ranks of the lattices. We provide two homology 3-spheres with distinct sets of such lattices, each containing a distinct nonempty subset of the rank 24 Niemeier lattices.
In this article, we shall investigate the relationship between the existence or non-existence of non-singular solutions to the normalized Ricci flow and smooth structures on closed 4-manifolds, where non-singular solutions to the normalized Ricci flow are solutions which exist for all time $t \in [0, \infty)$ with uniformly bounded sectional curvature. In dimension 4, there exist many compact topological manifolds admitting distinct smooth structures, i.e., exotic smooth structures. Interestingly, in this article, the difference between existence and non-existence of non-singular solutions to …
We define \emph{piecewise rank 1} manifolds, which are aspherical manifolds that generally do not admit a nonpositively curved metric but can be decomposed into pieces that are diffeomorphic to finite volume, irreducible, locally symmetric, nonpositively curved manifolds with $π_1$-injective cusps. We prove smooth (self) rigidity for this class of manifolds in the case where the gluing preserves the cusps' homogeneous structure. We compute the group of self homotopy equivalences of such a manifold and show that it can contain a normal free abelian subgroup and thus, can be infinite. Elements o…
We define cusp-decomposable manifolds and prove smooth rigidity within this class of manifolds. These manifolds generally do not admit a nonpositively curved metric but can be decomposed into pieces that are diffeomorphic to finite volume, locally symmetric, negatively curved manifolds with cusps. We prove that the group of outer automorphisms of the fundamental group of such a manifold is an extension of an abelian group by a finite group. Elements of the abelian group are induced by diffeomorphisms that are analogous to Dehn twists in surface topology. We also prove that the outer automophis…
We define a diffeomorphism invariant of smooth 4-manifolds which we can estimate for many smoothings of R^4 and other smooth 4-manifolds. Using this invariant we can show that uncountably many smoothings of R^4 support no Stein structure. (Gompf has constructed uncountably many smoothings of R^4 which do support Stein structures.) Other applications of this invariant are given.
In this paper we prove several related results concerning smooth $\Z_p$ or $\s^1$ actions on 4-manifolds. We show that there exists an infinite sequence of smooth 4-manifolds $X_n$, $n\geq 2$, which have the same integral homology and intersection form and the same Seiberg-Witten invariant, such that each $X_n$ supports no smooth $\s^1$-actions but admits a smooth $\Z_n$-action. In order to construct such manifolds, we devise a method for annihilating smooth $\s^1$-actions on 4-manifolds using Fintushel-Stern knot surgery, and apply it to the Kodaira-Thurston manifold in an equivariant setting…
In a recent paper, Park constructs certain exotic simply-connected four-manifolds with small Euler characteristics. Our aim here is to prove that the four-manifolds in his constructions are minimal.
The broken genera are orientation preserving diffeomorphism invariants of closed oriented 4-manifolds, defined via broken Lefschetz fibrations. We study the properties of the broken genera invariants, and calculate them for various 4-manifolds, while showing that the invariants are sensitive to exotic smooth structures.
We produce infinite families of exotic actions of finite cyclic groups on simply connected smooth 4-manifolds with nontrivial Seiberg-Witten invariants.
In this paper, we prove a geometrization conjecture, every orientable smooth closed 3-manifold with finite fundamental group is homeomorphic to $S^3/G$ for some finite cyclic subgroup $G\subset {Isom}^+(S^3)$.
A compact Fuchsian manifold with boundary is a hyperbolic 3-manifold homeomorphic to $S_g \times [0; 1]$ such that the boundary component $S_g \times \{ 0\}$ is geodesic. We prove that a compact Fuchsian manifold with convex boundary is uniquely determined by the induced path metric on $S_g \times \{1\}$. We do not put further restrictions on the boundary except convexity.
We prove that for every natural number k there are simply connected topological four-manifolds which have at leat k distinct smooth structures supporting Einstein metrics, and also have infinitely many distinct smooth structures not supporting Einstein metrics. Moreover, all these smooth structures become diffeomorphic after connected sum with only one copy of the complex projective plane. We prove that manifolds with these properties cover a large geographical area.
We show that, under a certain condition, contact 5-manifolds can `coarsely' distinguish smooth structures on compact Stein 4-manifolds via contact open books. We also give a simple sufficient condition for an infinite family of Stein 4-manifolds to have an infinite subfamily of pairwise non-diffeomorphic Stein 4-manifolds. The proofs rely on the adjunction inequality. We remark that there are various examples of infinitely many pairwise exotic Stein 4-manifolds whose smooth structures can be distinguished by these results.
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.
Using tools and results from geometric measure theory, we give a simple new proof of the main result (Theorem 1.3) in K. Kondo and M. Tanaka, Approximation of Lipschitz Maps via Immersions and Differentiable Exotic Sphere Theorems, \textit{Nonlinear Anal.} \textbf{155} (2017), 219--249, as well as the converse statement. It explores the connections between the theory of non-smooth analysis {\it à la} F.~H. Clarke and the existence of special systems of Whitney flat $1$-forms with Sobolev regularity on certain families of homology manifolds.
We study locally standard $T^k$-manifolds $M$. In particular, we study the case where there is a continuous section to the orbit map $π: M \rightarrow M/T$. We give a classification of $T^k$-manifolds satisfying these conditions up to equivariant diffeomorphism.
The Reeb space of a continuous function is the space of connected components of the level sets. In this paper we first prove that the Reeb space of a smooth function on a closed manifold with finitely many critical values has the structure of a finite graph without loops. We also show that an arbitrary finite graph without loops can be realized as the Reeb space of a certain smooth function on a closed manifold with finitely many critical values, where the corresponding level sets can also be preassigned. Finally, we show that a continuous map of a smooth closed connected manifold to a finite …
We study the fundamental groups of compact Sasakian manifolds, which we call Sasaki groups. It is shown that all known K$\ddot{a}$hler groups are Sasaki, in particular, all finite groups are Sasaki. On the other hand, we show there exists many restrictions on the fundamental groups of compact Sasakian manifolds. We also study the Abel-Jacobi map of a compact Sasakian manifold and its applications to Sasaki groups.
We show that every smooth, orientable, closed, connected 4-manifold can be represented by a loop in the pants complex. We use this representation, together with the fact that the pants complex is simply connected, to provide an elementary proof that such 4-manifolds are smoothly cobordant to $\coprod_m \mathbb{C}P^2 \coprod_n \bar{\mathbb{C}P}^2$. We also use this association to give information about the structure of the pants complex. Namely, given a loop in the pants complex, $L$, which bounds a disk, $D$, we show that the signature of the 4-manifold associated to $L$ gives a lower bound on…
We construct noncomplex smooth 4-manifolds which admit genus-2 Lefschetz fibrations over S^2. The fibrations are necessarily hyperelliptic, and the resulting 4-manifolds are not even homotopy equivalent to complex surfaces. Furthermore, these examples show that fiber sums of holomorphic Lefschetz fibrations do not necessarily admit complex structures.
Let M be either CP^2#3CP^2bar or 3CP^2#5CP^2bar. We construct the first example of a simply-connected symplectic 4-manifold that is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to M.
A trisection of a smooth, closed, oriented 4-manifold is a decomposition into three 4-dimensional 1-handlebodies meeting pairwise in 3-dimensional 1-handlebodies, with triple intersection a closed surface. The fundamental groups of the surface, the 3-dimensional handlebodies, the 4-dimensional handlebodies, and the closed 4-manifold, with homomorphisms between them induced by inclusion, form a commutative diagram of epimorphisms, which we call a trisection of the 4-manifold group. A trisected 4-manifold thus gives a trisected group; here we show that every trisected group uniquely determines a…
For every integer $k\geq 2$, we construct infinite families of mutually nondiffeomorphic irreducible smooth structures on the topological $4$-manifolds $(2k-1)(S^2\times S^2)$ and $(2k-1)(\CP#\CPb)$, the connected sums of $2k-1$ copies of $S^2\times S^2$ and $\CP#\CPb$.
For every integer g greater than or equal to 2, there exist infinitely many pairwise nonhomeomorphic smooth 4-manifolds that admit genus-g Lefschetz fibrations over S^2 but do not carry any complex structure with either orientation. This extends a recent result of Ozbagci and Stipsicz.
In this paper, we collect various structural results to determine when an integral homology $3$--sphere bounds an acyclic smooth $4$--manifold, and when this can be upgraded to a Stein manifold. In a different direction we study whether smooth embedding of connected sums of lens spaces in $\mathbb{C}^2$ can be upgraded to a Stein embedding, and determined that this never happens.
We show that any closed oriented 3-manifold can be topologically embedded in some simply-connected closed symplectic 4-manifold, and that it can be made a smooth embedding after one stabilization. As a corollary of the proof we show that the homology cobordism group is generated by Stein fillable 3-manifolds. We also find obstructions on smooth embeddings: there exists 3-manifolds which cannot smoothly embed in a way that appropriately respect orientations in any symplectic manifold with weakly convex boundary. This embedding obstruction can also be used to detect exotic smooth structures on 4…
Let $M$ be $\CP#2\CPb$, $3\CP#4\CPb$ or $(2n-1)\CP#2n\CPb$ for any integer $n\geq 3$. We construct an irreducible symplectic 4-manifold homeomorphic to $M$ and also an infinite family of pairwise non-diffeomorphic irreducible non-symplectic 4-manifolds homeomorphic to $M$. We also construct such exotic smooth structures when $M$ is $\CP#4\CPb$ or $3\CP# k \CPb$ for $k=6,8,10$.
Under certain homological hypotheses on a compact 4-manifold, we prove exactness of the topological surgery sequence at the stably smoothable normal invariants. The main examples are the class of finite connected sums of 4-manifolds with certain product geometries. Most of these compact manifolds have non-vanishing second mod 2 homology and have fundamental groups of exponential growth, which are not known to be tractable by Freedman-Quinn topological surgery. Necessarily, the *-construction of certain non-smoothable homotopy equivalences requires surgery on topologically embedded 2-spheres an…
We use the equivariant Yang-Mills moduli space to investigate the relation between the singular set, isotropy representations at fixed points, and permutation modules realized by the induced action on homology for smooth group actions on certain 4-manifolds.
Let $M$ be a triangulated, oriented, connected compact $3$-manifold with connected non-empty boundary. Such a manifold admits a unique decomposition into $\triangle$-prime $3$-manifolds. In this paper, we show that the adjoint Reidemeister torsion has a multiplicative property on the disk sum decomposition of compact $3$-manifolds without a corrective term.
We show that any homomorphism from the homeomorphism group of a compact 2-manifold, with the compact-open topology, or equivalently, with the topology of uniform convergence, into a separable topological group is automatically continuous.
A short survey of exotic smooth structutes on 4-manifolds is given with a special emphasis on the corresponding cork structures. Along the way we discuss some of the more recent results in this direction, obtained jointly with R.Matveyev, B.Ozbagci, C.Karakurt and K.Yasui.
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-dimensional topology and coarse geometry.
