Around 1960, R. Palais and J. Cerf proved a fundamental result relating spaces of diffeomorphisms and imbeddings of manifolds: If V is a submanifold of M, then the map from Diff(M) to Imb(V,M) that takes f to its restriction to V is locally trivial. We extend this and related results into the context of fibered manifolds, and fiber-preserving diffeomorphisms and imbeddings. That is, if M fibers over B, with compact fiber, and V is a vertical submanifold of M, then the restriction from the space FDiff(M) of fiber-preserving diffeomorphisms of M to the space of imbeddings of V into M that take fibers to fibers is locally trivial. Also, the map from FDiff(M) to Diff(B) that takes f to the diffeomorphism it induces on B is locally trivial. The proofs adapt Palais' original approach; the main new ingredient is a version of the exponential map, called the aligned exponential, which has better properties with respect to fiber-preserving maps. Versions allowing certain kinds of singular fibers are proven, using equivariant methods. These apply to almost all Seifert-fibered 3-manifolds. As an application, we reprove an unpublished result of F. Raymond and W. Neumann that each component of the space of Seifert fiberings of a Haken 3-manifold is weakly contractible.
Fix a free, orientation-preserving action of a finite group G on a 3-dimensional handlebody V. Whenever G acts freely preserving orientation on a connected 3-manifold X, there is a G-equivariant imbedding of V into X. There are choices of X closed and Seifert-fibered for which the image of V is a handlebody of a Heegaard splitting of X. Provided that the genus of V is at least 2, there are similar choices with X closed and hyperbolic.
It is well known that, among closed spherical Seifert three-manifolds, only lens spaces and prism manifolds admit several Seifert fibrations which are not equivalent up to diffeomorphism. Moreover the former admit infinitely many fibrations, and the latter exactly two. In this work, we analyse the non-uniqueness phenomenon for orbifold Seifert fibrations. For any closed spherical Seifert three-orbifold, we determine the number of its inequivalent fibrations. When these are in a finite number (in fact, at most three) we provide a complete list. In case of infinitely many fibrations, we describe…
Given a closed connected Riemannian manifold M and a connected Riemannian manifold N, we study fiberwise volume decreasing diffeomorphisms on the product M x N. Our main theorem shows that in the presence of certain cohomological condition on M and N such diffeomorphisms must map a fiber diffeomorphically onto another fiber and are therefore fiber volume preserving. As a first corollary, we show that the isometries of M x N split. We also study properly discontinuous actions of a discrete group on M x N. In this case, we generalize the first Bieberbach theorem and prove a special case of an ex…
The elliptic 3-manifolds are the closed 3-manifolds that admit a Riemannian metric of constant positive curvature, that is, those that have finite fundamental group. The (Generalized) Smale Conjecture asserts that for any elliptic 3-manifold M, the inclusion from the isometry group of M to the diffeomorphism group of M is a homotopy equivalence. The original Smale Conjecture, for the 3-sphere, was proven by J. Cerf and A. Hatcher, and N. Ivanov proved the generalized conjecture for many of the elliptic 3-manifolds that contain a geometrically incompressible Klein bottle. Our main results are 1…
Denote by $\DC(M)_0$ the identity component of the group of compactly supported $C^\infty$ diffeomorphisms of a connected $C^\infty$ manifold $M$, and by $\HR$ the group of the homeomorphisms of $\R$. We show that if $M$ is a closed manifold which fibers over $S^m$ ($m\geq 2$), then any homomorphism from $\DC(M)_0$ to $\HR$ is trivial.
This is a "software upgrade" to a paper originally published in 1976, with cleaner statements and improved proofs. The main result is that, in a Haken 3-manifold, the space of all incompressible surfaces in a single isotopy class is contractible, except when the surface is the fiber of a surface bundle structure, in which case the space of all surfaces isotopic to the fiber has the homotopy type of a circle (the fibers). The main application from the 1976 paper is also rederived, the theorem (proved independently by Ivanov) that the diffeomorphism group of a Haken 3-manifold has contractible c…
This paper extends the results from the author's previous paper to consider finite, fiber- and orientation- preserving group actions on closed, orientable Seifert manifolds $M$ that fiber over a non-orientable base space. An orientable base space double cover $\tilde{M}$ of $M$ is constructed and then an isomorphism between the fiber- and orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of ${M}$ and the fiber- and orientation-preserving actions on $\tilde{M}$ that preserve the orientation on the fibers and commute with the covering translation is shown. This result and previous results lead to a constru…
A homeomorphism of a compact metric space is {\em tight} provided every non-degenerate compact connected (not necessarily invariant) subset carries positive entropy. It is shown that every $C^{1+α}$ diffeomorphism of a closed surface factors to a tight homeomorphism of a generalized cactoid (roughly, a surface with nodes) by a semi-conjugacy whose fibers carry zero entropy.
In two previous papers the author presented a general construction of finite, fiber- and orientation-preserving group actions on orientable Seifert manifolds. In this paper we restrict our attention to elliptic 3-manifolds. A proof is given that orientation-reversing and fiber-preserving diffeomorphisms of Seifert manifolds do not exist for nonzero Euler class, in particular elliptic 3-manifolds. Each type of elliptic 3-manifold is then considered and the possible group actions that fit the given construction. This is shown to be all but a few cases that have been considered elsewhere. Finally…
Let M be a closed orientable Seifert fibered 3-manifold with a hyperbolic base 2-orbifold, or equivalently, admitting a geometry modeled on H^2 \times R or the universal cover of SL(2,R). Our main result is that the connected component of the identity map in the diffeomorphism group Diff(M) is either contractible or homotopy equivalent to the circle, according as the center of the fundamental group of M is trivial or infinite cyclic. Apart from the remaining case of non-Haken infranilmanifolds, this completes the homeomorphism classifications of Diff(M) and of the space of Seifert fiberings of…
By extending a result of Kronheimer-Mrowka to the family setting, we prove a gluing formula for the family Seiberg-Witten invariant. This formula allows one to compute the invariant for a smooth family of 4-manifolds by cutting it open along a product family of 3-manifolds and studying the induced maps on monopole Floer (co)homology. When the cutting 3-manifold is an L-space, this formula implies a relation between the family Seiberg-Witten invariant, the Seiberg-Witten invariant of the fiber and the index of the family Dirac operator. We use this relation to calculate the Seiberg-Witten invar…
We study 3-dimensional dynamically coherent partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms that are homotopic to the identity, focusing on the transverse geometry and topology of the center stable and center unstable foliations, and the dynamics within their leaves. We find a structural dichotomy for these foliations, which we use to show that every such diffeomorphism on a hyperbolic or Seifert fibered 3-manifold is leaf conjugate to the time one map of a (topological) Anosov flow. This proves a classification conjecture of Hertz-Hertz-Ures in hyperbolic 3-manifolds and in the homotopy class of the ide…
We give finiteness results and some classifications up to diffeomorphism of minimal strong symplectic fillings of Seifert fibered spaces over S^2 satisfying certain conditions, with a fixed natural contact structure. In some cases we can prove that all symplectic fillings are obtained by rational blow-downs of a plumbing of spheres. In other cases, we produce new manifolds with convex symplectic boundary, thus yielding new cut-and-paste operations on symplectic manifolds containing certain configurations of symplectic spheres.
By applying the lantern relation substitutions to the positive relation of the genus two Lefschetz fibration over $\mathbb{S}^{2}$. We show that $K3\#2 \overline{\mathbb{CP}}{}^{2}$ can be rationally blown down along seven disjoint copies of the configuration $C_2$. We compute the Seiberg-Witten invariant of the resulting symplectic 4-manifolds, and show that they are symplectically minimal. We also investigate how these exotic smooth 4-manifolds constructed via lantern relation substitution method are fiber sum decomposable. Furthermore by considering all the possible decompositions for each …
If $K$ is a fibered knot in a closed, oriented $3$--manifold $Y$ with fiber $F$, and $\widehat{HFK}(Y,K,[F], g(F)-1;\mathbb Z/2\mathbb Z)$ has rank $r$, then the monodromy of $K$ is freely isotopic to a diffeomorphism with at most $r-1$ fixed points. This generalizes earlier work of Baldwin--Hu--Sivek and Ni. We also clarify a misleading formula in Cotton-Clay's computation of the symplectic Floer homology of mapping classes of surfaces.
We give constraints on smooth families of 4-manifolds with boundary using Manolescu's Seiberg-Witten Floer stable homotopy type, provided that the fiberwise restrictions of the families to the boundaries are trivial families of 3-manifolds. As an application, we show that, for a simply-connected oriented compact smooth 4-manifold $X$ with boundary with an assumption on the Frøyshov invariant or the Manolescu invariants $α, β, γ$ of $\partial X$, the inclusion map $\mathrm{Diff}(X,\partial) \hookrightarrow \mathrm{Homeo}(X,\partial)$ between the groups of diffeomorphisms and homeomorphisms whic…
We prove hyperbolic 3-manifolds are geometrically inflexible: a unit quasiconformal deformation of a Kleinian group extends to an equivariant bi-Lipschitz diffeomorphism between quotients whose pointwise bi-Lipschitz constant decays exponentially in the distance form the boundary of the convex core for points in the thick part. Estimates at points in the thin part are controlled by similar estimates on the complex lengths of short curves. We use this inflexibility to give a new proof of the convergence of pseudo-Anosov double-iteration on the quasi-Fuchsian space of a closed surface, and the r…
The homotopy fiber of the inclusion from the long embedding space to the long immersion space is known to be an iterated based loop space (if the codimension is greater than two). In this paper we deloop the homotopy fiber to obtain the topological Stiefel manifold, combining results of Lashof and of Lees. We also give a delooping of the long embedding space, which can be regarded as a version of Morlet-Burghelea-Lashof's delooping of the diffeomorphism group of the disk relative to the boundary. As a corollary, we show that the homotopy fiber is weakly equivalent to a space on which the frame…
We establish constraints on the topology of smooth Lefschetz fibrations with $4$-dimensional fibers, by studying the family Bauer-Furuta invariant. To compute this invariant, we analyze the framed bordism class of 1-dimensional Seiberg-Witten moduli spaces using the local index theorem by Bismut-Freed. Using this, we deduce new obstructions to the smooth isotopy to the identity for compositions of Dehn twists on $(-2)$-spheres in closed $4$-manifolds. We obtain several applications: (1) We exhibit the first examples of closed simply-connected symplectic $4$-manifolds admitting Torelli symplect…
Here we prove that up to diffeomorphism every compact Stein manifold W of dimension 2n+2>4 admits a Lefschetz fibration over the two-disk with Stein regular fibers, such that the monodromy of the fibration is a symplectomorphism induced by compositions of right-handed Dehn twists along embedded Lagrangian n-spheres on the generic fiber. This generalizes the Stein surface case of n=1, previously proven by Loi-Piergallini and Akbulut-Ozbagci. More precisely, we show that up to Liouville isomorphism any Weinstein domain W admits a compatible compact convex Lefschetz fibration with Weinstein regul…
We apply spectral sequences to derive both an obstruction to the existence of $n$-fold prolongations and a topological classification. Prolongations have been used in the literature in an attempt to prove that every Engel structure on $M\times\mathbb{S}^1$ with characteristic line field tangent to the fibers is determined by the contact structure induced on a cross section and the twisting of the Engel structure along the fibers. Our results show that this statement needs some modification: to classify the diffeomorphism type of the Engel structure we additionally have to fix a class in the fi…
Stable fold maps are fundamental tools in a generalization of the theory of Morse functions on smooth manifolds and its application to studies of topological properties of smooth manifolds. Round fold maps were introduced as stable fold maps with singular value sets, defined as the set consisting of all the singular values, of concentric spheres by the author in 2013; for example, some special generic maps on spheres are regarded as round fold maps whose singular value sets are connected. Algebraic invariants such as homology and homotopy groups of manifolds admitting round fold maps and more …
Characteristic classes of oriented vector bundles can be identified with cohomology classes of the disjoint union of classifying spaces BSO_n of special orthogonal groups SO_n with n=0,1,... A characteristic class is stable if it extends to a cohomology class of a homotopy colimit BSO of classifying spaces BSO_n. Similarly, characteristic classes of smooth oriented manifold bundles with fibers given by oriented closed smooth manifolds of a fixed dimension d\ge 0 can be identified with cohomology classes of the disjoint union of classifying spaces BDiff M of orientation preserving diffeomorphis…
We apply Menke's JSJ decomposition for symplectic fillings to several families of contact 3-manifolds. Among other results, we complete the classification up to orientation-preserving diffeomorphism of strong symplectic fillings of lens spaces. We show that exact symplectic fillings of contact manifolds obtained by surgery on certain Legendrian negative cables are the result of attaching a Weinstein 2-handle to an exact filling of a lens space. For large families of contact structures on Seifert fibered spaces over $S^2$, we reduce the problem of classifying exact symplectic structures to the …
We construct smooth bundles with base and fiber products of two spheres whose total spaces have non-vanishing $\hat{A}$-genus. We then use these bundles to locate non-trivial rational homotopy groups of spaces of Riemannian metrics with lower curvature bounds for all Spin-manifolds of dimension six or at least ten which admit such a metric and are a connected sum of some manifold and $S^n \times S^n$ or $S^n \times S^{n+1}$, respectively. We also construct manifolds $M$ whose spaces of Riemannian metrics of positive scalar curvature have homotopy groups that contain elements of infinite order …
