We consider two pairs: the standard unknotted $n$-sphere in $S^{n+2}$, and the product of two $p$-spheres trivially embedded in $S^{2p+2}$, and study orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of these pairs. Pseudo-isotopy classes of such diffeomorphisms form subgroups of the mapping class groups of $S^n$ and $S^p\times S^p$ respectively and we determine the algebraic structure of such subgroups when $n>4$ and $p>1$.
In this article, we study the knots realized by periodic orbits of R-covered Anosov flows in compact 3-manifolds. We show that if two orbits are freely homotopic then in fact they are isotopic. We show that lifts of periodic orbits to the universal cover are unknotted. When the manifold is atoroidal, we deduce some finer properties regarding the existence of embedded cylinders connecting two given homotopic orbits.
Scharlemann constructed a connected simplicial 2-complex $Γ$ with an action by the group ${\mathcal H_{2}}$ of isotopy classes of orientation preserving homeomorphisms of $S^3$ that preserve the isotopy class of an unknotted genus 2 handlebody $V$. In this paper we prove that the 2-complex $Γ$ is contractible. Therefore we get a finite presentation of ${\mathcal H_{2}}$.
Techniques of gauge theory are used to define and compute an invariant of certain diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds. The invariant vanishes for any diffeomorphism which is smoothly isotopic to the identity. As an application, we give the first example of a diffeomorphism of a simply-connected 4-manifold which is homotopic to the identity map, but not smoothly isotopic to the identity.
The mapping class group $MCG(Σ_g)$ of a surface of genus $g$ has a long-history in topology and group theory. More recently, the mapping class group $MCG(V_g)$ of a handlebody $V_g$ of genus $g$ has become an interesting topic in the study of $3$ manifolds, largely thanks to Heegaard splitting. While $MCG(V_g)$ can be regarded naturally as a sub group of $MCG(Σ_g)$, we could not find any complete proof of this fundamental theorem. It is the purpose of this paper that we give a rigorous proof of embedding of $MCG(V_g)$ into $MCG(V_g)$. The key step is: Any self-homeomorphism $f$ of handlebody $…
A diffeomorphism $f$ of a compact manifold $X$ is pseudo-isotopic to the identity if there is a diffeomorphism $F$ of $X\times I$ which restricts to $f$ on $X\times 1$, and which restricts to the identity on $X\times 0$ and $\partial X\times I$. We construct examples of diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds which are pseudo-isotopic but not isotopic to the identity. To do so, we further understanding of which elements of the "second pseudo-isotopy obstruction", defined by Hatcher and Wagoner, can be realised by pseudo-isotopies of 4-manifolds. We also prove that all elements of the first and second p…
Algebraic structure of the group of pseudo-isotopy classes of diffeomorphisms of the trivial disk bundle over the standard sphere which restrict to the identity map on the boundary is determined.
David Gabai recently proved a smooth 4-dimensional "Light Bulb Theorem" in the absence of 2-torsion in the fundamental group. We extend his result to 4-manifolds with arbitrary fundamental group by showing that an invariant of Mike Freedman and Frank Quinn gives the complete obstruction to "homotopy implies isotopy" for embedded 2-spheres which have a common geometric dual. The invariant takes values in an Z/2Z-vector space generated by elements of order 2 in the fundamental group and has applications to unknotting numbers and pseudo-isotopy classes of self-diffeomorphisms. Our methods also gi…
In this paper, we are concerned with interactions between isoparametric theory and differential topology. Two foliations are called equivalent if there exists a diffeomorphism between the foliated manifolds mapping leaves to leaves. Using differential topology, we obtain several results towards the classification problem of isoparametric foliations up to equivalence. In particular, we show that each homotopy $n$-sphere has the "same" isoparametric foliations as the standard sphere $S^n$ has except for $n=4$, reducing the classification problem on homotopy spheres to that on the standard sphere…
In this paper we investigate the relationship between isotopy classes of knots and links in S^3 and the diffeomorphism types of homeomorphic smooth 4-manifolds. As a corollary of this initial investigation, we begin to uncover the surprisingly rich structure of diffeomorphism types of manifolds homeomorphic to the K3 surface.
For M_r = #_r(S^p \times S^p), p=3, 7, we calculate the group of isotopy classes of orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of $M_r$ modulo isotopy classes with representatives which are the identity outside a 2p-disc and also the group of homotopy classes of orientation preserving homotopy equivalences of M_r.
We study the classification of slice disks of knots up to isotopy and diffeomorphism using an invariant in knot Floer homology. We compute the invariant of a slice disk obtained by deform-spinning, and show that it can be effectively used to distinguish non-isotopic slice disks with diffeomorphic complements. Given a slice disk of a composite knot, we define a numerical stable diffeomorphism invariant called the rank. This can be used to show that a slice disk is not a boundary connected sum, and to give lower bounds on the complexity of certain hyperplane sections of the slice disk.
We work in the smooth category. The following problem was suggested by E. Rees in 2002: describe the precomposition action of self-diffeomorphisms of S^p x S^q on the set of isotopy classes of embeddings S^p x S^q -> R^m. Let g : S^p x S^q -> R^m be an embedding such that g |_{a x S^q} : a x S^q -> R^m - g (b x S^q) is null-homotopic for some pair of different points a,b in S^p. Theorem. If h is an autodiffeomorphism of S^p x S^q identical on a neighborhood of a x S^q for some a\in S^p and p<q and 2m<3p+3q+5, then g h is isotopic to g. Let N be an oriented (p+q)-manifold and f : N -> R^m, g : …
Let $B$ be a Möbius band and $f:B \to \mathbb{R}$ be a Morse map taking a constant value on $\partial B$, and $\mathcal{S}(f,\partial B)$ be the group of diffeomorphisms $h$ of $B$ fixed on $\partial B$ and preserving $f$ in the sense that $f\circ h = f$. Under certain assumptions on $f$ we compute the group $π_0\mathcal{S}(f,\partial B)$ of isotopy classes of such diffeomorphisms. In fact, those computations hold for functions $f:B\to\mathbb{R}$ whose germs at critical points are smoothly equivalent to homogeneous polynomials $\mathbb{R}^2\to\mathbb{R}$ without multiple factors. Together with…
We provide combinatorial realizations, according to the usual objects/moves scheme, of the following three topological categories: (1) pairs (M,v) where M is a 3-manifold (up to diffeomorphism) and v is a (non-singular vector) field, up to homotopy; here possibly the boundary of M is non-empty and v may be tangent to the boundary, but only in a concave fashion, and homotopy should preserve tangency type; (2) framed links L in M, up to framed isotopy; (3) triples (M,v,L), with (M,v) as above and L transversal to v, up to pseudo-Legendrian isotopy (transversality-preserving simultaneous homotopy…
We consider a parallelizable $2n$-manifold $F$ which has the homotopy type of the wedge product of $n$-spheres and show that the group of pseudo-isotopy classes of orientation preserving diffeomorphisms that keep the boundary $\partial F$ pointwise fixed and induce the trivial variation operator is a central extension of the group of all homotopy $(2n+1)$-spheres by $H_n\bigl(F; Sπ_n(SO(n))\bigr)$. Then we apply this result to study the periodicity properties of branched cyclic covers of manifolds with simple open book decompositions and extend the previous results of Durfee, Kauffman and Stev…
We consider mapping class groups Γ(M) = pi_0 Diff(M fix \partial M) of smooth compact simply connected oriented 4-manifolds M bounded by a collection of 3-spheres. We show that if M contains CP^2 (with either orientation) as a connected summand then Γ(M) is independent of the number of boundary components. By repackaging classical results of Wall, Kreck and Quinn, we show that the natural homomorphism from the mapping class group to the group of automorphisms of the intersection form becomes an isomorphism after stabilization with respect to connected sum with CP^2 # \bar{CP^2}. We next consid…
