We work in the smooth category. If there are knotted embeddings S^n\to R^m, which often happens for 2m<3n+4, then no concrete complete description of embeddings of n-manifolds into R^m up to isotopy was known, except for disjoint unions of spheres. Let N be a closed connected orientable 3-manifold. Our main result is the following description of the set Emb^6(N) of embeddings N\to R^6 up to isotopy.
The Whitney invariant W : Emb^6(N) \to H_1(N;Z) is surjective. For each u \in H_1(N;Z) the Kreck invariant η_u : W^{-1}u \to Z_{d(u)} is bijective, where d(u) is the divisibility of the projection of u to the free part of H_1(N;Z).
The group Emb^6(S^3) is isomorphic to Z (Haefliger). This group acts on Emb^6(N) by embedded connected sum. It was proved that the orbit space of this action maps under W bijectively to H_1(N;Z) (by Vrabec and Haefliger's smoothing theory). The new part of our classification result is determination of the orbits of the action. E. g. for N=RP^3 the action is free, while for N=S^1\times S^2 we construct explicitly an embedding f : N \to R^6 such that for each knot l:S^3\to R^6 the embedding f#l is isotopic to f.
Our proof uses new approaches involving the Kreck modified surgery theory or the Boechat-Haefliger formula for smoothing obstruction.
Let $N$ be a closed orientable connected $n$-manifold, $n\ge 4$. We classify embeddings of the punctured manifold $N_0$ into $\R^{2n-1}$ up to isotopy. Our result in some sense extends results of J.C. Becker -- H.H. Glover (1971) and O. Saeki (1999).
We obtain estimations for isotopy classes of embeddings of closed k-connected n-manifolds into R^{2n-k-1} for n>2k+5 and k\ge0. This is done in terms of an exact sequence involving the Whitney invariants and an explicitly constructed action of H_{k+1}(N;Z_2) on the set of embeddings. (For k\ne1 classification results were obtained by algebraic methods without direct construction of embeddings or homology invariants.) The proof involves reduction to classification of embeddings of punctured manifold and uses parametric connected sum of embeddings.
We study the spaces of embeddings of manifolds in a Euclidean space. More precisely we look at the homotopy fiber of the inclusion of these spaces to the spaces of immersions. As a main result we express the rational homotopy type of connected components of those embedding spaces through combinatorially defined $L_\infty$-algebras of diagrams.
For each composite number $n\ne 2^k$, there does not exist a single connected closed $(n+1)$-manifold such that any smooth, simply-connected, closed $n$-manifold can be topologically flat embedded into it. There is a single connected closed 5-manifold $W$ such that any simply-connected, 4-manifold $M$ can be topologically flat embedded into $W$ if $M$ is either closed and indefinite, or compact and with non-empty boundary.
We obtain multirelative connectivity statements about spaces of smooth embeddings, deducing these from analogous results about spaces of Poincare embeddings that were established in our previous paper.
For a topological space $X$ we study continuous maps $f : X\to \mathbb R^m$ such that images of every pairwise distinct $k$ points are affinely (linearly) independent. Such maps are called affinely (linearly) $k$-regular embeddings. We investigate the cohomology obstructions to existence of regular embeddings and give some new lower bounds on the dimension $m$ as function of $X$ and $k$, for the cases $X$ is $\mathbb R^n$ or $X$ is an $n$-dimensional manifold. In the latter case, some nonzero Stiefel--Whitney classes of $X$ help to improve the bound.
We work in the smooth category. Let N be a closed connected n-manifold and assume that m>n+2. Denote by E^m(N) the set of embeddings N -> R^m up to isotopy. The group E^m(S^n) acts on E^m(N) by embedded connected sum of a manifold and a sphere. If E^m(S^n) is non-zero (which often happens for 2m<3n+4) then no results on this action and no complete description of E^m(N) were known. Our main results are examples of the triviality and the effectiveness of this action, and a complete isotopy classification of embeddings into R^7 for certain 4-manifolds N. The proofs are based on the Kreck modifica…
In this paper we study existence and lack thereof of closed embedded orientable co-dimension one totally geodesic submanifolds of minimal volume cusped orientable hyperbolic manifolds.
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…
In this note, we discuss embeddings of $3$--manifolds via open books. First we show that every open book of every closed orientable $3$--manifold admits an open book embedding in any open book decompistion of $S^2 \times S^3$ and $S^2 \widetilde{\times} S^3$ with the page a disk bundle over $S^2$ and monodromy the identity. We then use open book embeddings to reprove that every closed orientable $3$--manifold embeds in $S^5.$
We discuss embedding of manifolds in the category of open books, contact manifolds and contact open books. We prove an open book version of the Haefliger--Hirsch embedding theorem by showing that every $k$-connected closed $n$-manifold ($n\geq 7$, $k < \frac{n-4}{2}$) admits an open book embedding in the trivial open book of $\mathbb{S}^{2n-k}$. We then prove that every closed manifold $M^{2n+1}$ that bounds an achiral Lefschetz fibration, admits open book embedding in the trivial open book of $\mathbb{S}^{2\lfloor\frac{3n}{2}\rfloor + 3}$. We also prove that every closed manifold $M^{2n+1}$ b…
We construct an obstruction for the existence of embeddings of homology $3$-sphere into homology $S^3\times S^1$ under some cohomological condition. The obstruction is defined as an element in the filtered version of the instanton Floer cohomology due to R.Fintushel-R.Stern. We make use of the $\mathbb{Z}$-fold covering space of homology $S^3\times S^1$ and the instantons on it.
We show that the infinite cyclic cover of the exterior of the untwisted Whitehead double of a non-trivial knot does not embed in any compact 3-manifold, answering a question of Jiang, Ni, Wang and Zhou.
In this article we study proper symplectic and iso-symplectic embeddings of $4$--manifolds in $6$--manifolds. We show that a closed orientable smooth $4$--manifold admitting a Lefschetz fibration over $\C P^1$ admits a symplectic embedding in the symplectic manifold $(\C P^1 \times \C P^1 \times \C P^1, ω_{pr}),$ where $ω_{pr}$ is the product symplectic form on $\C P^1 \times \C P^1 \times \C P^1.$ We also show that there exists a sub-critical Weinstein $6$--manifold in which all finite type Weinstein $4$--manifolds admit iso-symplectic embeddings.
Every lens space has a locally flat embedding in a connected sum of 8 copies of the complex projective plane and a smooth embedding in n copies of the complex projective plane for some positive integer n. We show that there is no n such that every lens space smoothly embeds in n copies of the complex projective plane.
In this note we observe that one can contact embed all contact 3-manifolds into a Stein fillable contact structure on the twisted $S^3$-bundle over $S^2$ and also into a unique overtwisted contact structure on $S^3\times S^2$. These results are proven using "spun embeddings" and Lefschetz fibrations.
In this paper we study embeddings of contact manifolds using braidings of one manifold about another. In particular we show how to embed many contact 3-manifolds into the standard contact 5-sphere. We also show how to obstruct braidings of one manifold about another using contact geometry.
An invariant of orientable 3-manifolds is defined by taking the minimum $n$ such that a given 3-manifold embeds in the connected sum of $n$ copies of $S^2 \times S^2$, and we call this $n$ the embedding number of the 3-manifold. We give some general properties of this invariant, and make calculations for families of lens spaces and Brieskorn spheres. We show how to construct rational and integral homology spheres whose embedding numbers grow arbitrarily large, and which can be calculated exactly if we assume the 11/8-Conjecture. In a different direction we show that any simply connected 4-mani…
A key tool in our earlier work on ends of manifolds high-dimensional manifolds was an ability to embed cobordisms provided by the Quillen Plus Construction into those ends. Here we develop a `spherical modification' trick which provides a constructive approach to obtaining such embeddings. More importantly, this approach allows for more general embedding results. In this paper we develop generalizations of the plus construction and show how the corresponding cobordisms can be embedded in manifolds satisfying appropriate fundamental group properties. Results obtained here play an important role…
We consider embeddings of 3-manifolds in $S^4$ such that each of the two complementary regions has an abelian fundamental group. In particular, we show that an homology handle $M$ has such an embedding if and only if $π_1(M)'$ is perfect, and that the embedding is then essentially unique.
This paper shows that many hyperbolic manifolds obtained by glueing arithmetic pieces embed into higher-dimensional hyperbolic manifolds as codimension-one totally geodesic submanifolds. As a consequence, many Gromov--Pyatetski-Shapiro and Agol--Belolipetsky--Thomson non-arithmetic manifolds embed geodesically. Moreover, we show that the number of commensurability classes of hyperbolic manifolds with a representative of volume $\leq v$ that bounds geometrically is at least $v^{Cv}$, for $v$ large enough.
Using an obstruction based on Donaldson's theorem on the intersection forms of definite 4-manifolds, we determine which connected sums of lens spaces smoothly embed in S^4. We also find constraints on the Seifert invariants of Seifert 3-manifolds which embed in S^4 when either the base orbifold is non-orientable or the first Betti number is odd. In addition we construct some new embeddings and use these, along with the d and mu-bar invariants, to examine the question of when the double branched cover of a 3 or 4 strand pretzel link embeds.
We prove that for any compact orientable connected 3-manifold with torus boundary, a concatenation of it and the direct product of the circle and the Klein bottle with an open 2-disk removed admits a Lagrangian embedding into the standard symplectic 6-space. Moreover, minimal Maslov number of the Lagrangian embedding is equal to 1.
The purpose of this paper is to present, for all $n\ge 3$, very simple examples of continuous maps $f:M^{n-1} \to M^{n}$ from closed $(n-1)$-manifolds $M^{n-1}$ into closed $n$-manifold $M^n$ such that even though the singular set $S(f)$ of $f$ is countable and dense, the map $f$ can nevertheless be approximated by an embedding, i.e. $f$ is a {\sl near-embedding}.
We prove that the universal cover of any graph manifold quasi-isometrically embeds into a product of three trees. In particular we show that the Assouad-Nagata dimension of the universal cover of any closed graph manifold is 3, proving a conjecture of Smirnov.
We show that a compact orientable 4-manifold M has a CR regular immersion into C3 if and only if both its first Pontryagin class and its Euler characteristic vanish, and has a CR regular embedding into C3 if and only if in addition the second Stiefel-Whitney class of M vanishes.
If the fundamental group of the complement of a smooth embedding f: S^2 \subset R^4 is a cyclic group, the map can be deformed to the standard embedding by a generic one-parameter family with at most cusp singularities. If two smooth embeddings are connected by such a deformation, they will be called cusp equivalent. We will discuss the relation of three equivalences of smooth 2-knots S^2 \subset R^4; cusp equivalence, stable equivalence and weakly stable equivalence.
Let M be a PL 2-manifold and X be a compact subpolyhedron of M and let E(X, M) denote the space of embeddings of X into M with the compact-open topology. In this paper we study an extension property of embeddings of X into M and show that the restriction map from the homeomorphism group of M to E(X, M) is a principal bundle. As an application we show that if M is a Euclidean PL 2-manifold and dim X >= 1 then the triple (E(X,M), E^LIP(X,M), E^PL(X, M)) is an (s,Sigma,sigma)-manifold, where E_K^LIP(X,M) and E_K^PL(X, M) denote the subspaces of Lipschitz and PL embeddings.
We show that, for $\varepsilon=\dfrac{1}{4000}$, any action of a finite cyclic group by $(1+\varepsilon)$-bilipschitz homeomorphisms on a closed 3-manifold is conjugated to a smooth action.
In every dimension $n\ge 3$ we introduce a class of orthogonal graph-manifolds and prove that the fundamental group of any orthogonal graph-manifold quasi-isometrically embeds into a product of $n$ trees. As a consequence, we obtain that asymptotic and linearly-controlled asymptotic dimensions of such group are equal to $n$.
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.
Suppose a finite group $G$ acts on a manifold $M$. By a theorem of Mostow, also Palais, there is a $G$-equivariant embedding of $M$ into the $m$-dimensional Euclidean space $\RR^{m}$ for some $m$. We are interested in some explicit bounds of such $m$. First we provide an upper bound: there exists a $G$-equivariant embedding of $M$ into $\RR^{d|G|+1}$, where $|G|$ is the order of $G$ and $M$ embeds into $\RR^d$. Next we provide a lower bound for finite cyclic group action $G$: If there are $l$ points having pairwise co-prime lengths of $G$-orbits greater than $1$ and there is a $G$-equivariant …
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…
We prove that any arithmetic hyperbolic $n$-manifold of simplest type can either be geodesically embedded into an arithmetic hyperbolic $(n+1)$-manifold or its universal $\mathrm{mod}~2$ Abelian cover can.
We prove that there is an algorithm which determines whether or not a given 2-polyhedron can be embedded into some integral homology 3-sphere. This is a corollary of the following main result. Let $M$ be a compact connected orientable 3-manifold with boundary. Denote $G=\Z$, $G=\Z/p\Z$ or $G=\Q$. If $H_1(M;G)\cong G^k$ and $\bd M$ is a surface of genus $g$, then the minimal group $H_1(Q;G)$ for closed 3-manifolds $Q$ containing $M$ is isomorphic to $G^{k-g}$. Another corollary is that for a graph $L$ the minimal number $\rk H_1(Q;\Z)$ for closed orientable 3-manifolds $Q$ containing $L\times S…
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 rational homology balls $B_n$ appeared in Fintushel and Stern's rational blow-down construction [FS] and were subsequently used (e.g. Fintushel-Stern[FS4], Park[Pa2]) to construct exotic smooth manifolds with small Euler numbers. We show that a large class of smooth 4-manifolds have all of the $B_n$'s for odd $n \geq 3$ embedded in them. In particular, we give explicit examples, using Kirby calculus, of several families of smooth embeddings of the rational homology balls $B_n$.
This paper gives necessary and sufficient conditions on a compact, connected, orientable 3-manifold M for it to contain a knot K such that M-K is irreducible and pi_1(M) embeds in pi_1(M-K). This result provides counterexamples to a conjecture of Lopes and Morales and characterizes those orientable 3-manifolds for which it is true.
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 consider embeddings of 3-manifolds $M$ in $S^4$ such that the two complementary regions $X$ and $Y$ each have nilpotent fundamental group. If $β=β_1(M)$ is odd then these groups are abelian and $β\leq3$. In general, $π_1(X)$ and $π_1(Y)$ have 3-generator presentations, and $β\leq6$. We determine all such nilpotent groups which are torsion-free and have Hirsch length $\leq5$.
We exhibit an infinite family of rational homology balls which embed smoothly but not symplectically in the complex projective plane. We also obtain a new lattice embedding obstruction from Donaldson's diagonalisation theorem, and use this to show that no two of our examples may be embedded disjointly.
We produce infinite families of exotic actions of finite cyclic groups on simply connected smooth 4-manifolds with nontrivial Seiberg-Witten invariants.
The purpose of this article is to study co-dimension $2$ iso-contact embeddings of closed contact manifolds. We first show that a closed contact manifold $(M^{2n-1}, ξ_M)$ iso-contact embeds in a contact manifold $(N^{2n+1}, ξ_N),$ provided $M$ contact embeds in $(N, ξ_N)$ with a trivial normal bundle and the contact structure induced on $M$ via this embedding is homotopic as an almost-contact structure to $ξ_M.$ We apply this result to first establish that a closed contact $3$--manifold having no $2$--torsion in its second integral cohomology iso-contact embeds in the standard contact $5$--sp…
We prove that any compact almost complex manifold $(M, J)$ of real dimension $2m$ admits a pseudo-holomorphic embedding in a Euclidean space of dimension $4m + 2$, endowed with a suitable non-standard almost complex structure. Moreover, we give a necessary and sufficient condition, expressed in terms of the Segre class of $(M, J)$, for the existence of an embedding or an immersion in an almost complex Euclidean $4m$-space. We also discuss the pseudo-holomorphic embeddings of an almost complex 4-manifold in $R^6$.
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.
Whenever a finitely generated group $G$ acts properly discontinuously by isometries on a metric space $X$, there is an induced uniform embedding (a Lipschitz and uniformly proper map) $ρ: G \rightarrow X$ given by mapping $G$ to an orbit. We study when there is a difference between a finitely generated group $G$ acting properly on a contractible $n$-manifold and uniformly embedding into a contractible $n$-manifold. For example, Kapovich and Kleiner showed that there are torsion-free hyperbolic groups that uniformly embed into a contractible $3$-manifold but only virtually act on a contractible…
