Canonical framings and stable framings for the tangent bundle of a spin 3-manifold are introduced, and illustrated by a number of familiar examples. Methods for constructing canonical framings, and for comparing them with other naturally defined framings, are discussed.
We give an elementary proof of the fact that any orientable 3-manifold admits a framing (i.e. is parallelizable) and any non-orientable 3-manifold admits a projective framing. The proof uses only basic facts about immersions of surfaces in 3-space.
After surveying existing proofs that every closed, orientable 3-manifold is parallelizable, we give three proofs using minimal background. In particular, our proofs use neither spin structures nor the theory of Stiefel-Whitney classes.
We construct a simple topological invariant of certain 3-manifolds, including quotients of the 3-sphere by finite groups, based on the fact that the tangent bundle of an orientable 3-manifold is trivialisable. This invariant is strong enough to yield the classification of lens spaces of odd, prime order. We also use properties of this invariant to show that there is an oriented 3-manifold with no universally tight contact structure. We generalise and sharpen this invariant to an invariant of a finite covering of a 3-manifold.
In view of the self-linking invariant, the number $|K|$ of framed knots in $S^3$ with given underlying knot $K$ is infinite. In fact, the second author previously defined affine self-linking invariants and used them to show that $|K|$ is infinite for every knot in an orientable manifold unless the manifold contains a connected sum factor of $S^1\times S^2$; the knot $K$ need not be zero-homologous and the manifold is not required to be compact. We show that when $M$ is orientable, the number $|K|$ is infinite unless $K$ intersects a non-separating sphere at exactly one point, in which case $|K…
For an integer $n$, write $X_n(K)$ for the 4-manifold obtained by attaching a 2-handle to the 4-ball along the knot $K\subset S^3$ with framing $n$. It is known that if $n< \overline{\text{tb}}(K)$, then $X_n(K)$ admits the structure of a Stein domain, and moreover the adjunction inequality implies there is an upper bound on the value of $n$ such that $X_n(K)$ is Stein. We provide examples of knots $K$ and integers $n\geq \overline{\text{tb}}(K)$ for which $X_n(K)$ is Stein, answering an open question in the field. In fact, our family of examples shows that the largest framing such that the ma…
We give examples of open 3-manifolds and 3-orbifolds that exhibit pathological behavior with respect to splitting along surfaces (2-suborbifolds) with nonnegative Euler characteristic.
We construct a pairing, which we call factorization homology, between framed manifolds and higher categories. The essential geometric notion is that of a vari-framing of a stratified manifold, which is a framing on each stratum together with a coherent system of compatibilities of framings along links between strata. Our main result constructs labeling systems on disk-stratified vari-framed $n$-manifolds from $(\infty,n)$-categories. These $(\infty,n)$-categories, in contrast with the literature to date, are not required to have adjoints. This allows the following conceptual definition: the fa…
We construct modular categories from Hecke algebras at roots of unity. For a special choice of the framing parameter, we recover the Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants of closed 3-manifolds constructed from the quantum groups U_q sl(N) by Reshetikhin-Turaev and Turaev-Wenzl, and from skein theory by Yokota. We then discuss the choice of the framing parameter. This leads, for any rank N and level K, to a modular category \tilde H^{N,K} and a reduced invariant \tildeτ_{N,K}. If N and K are coprime, then this invariant coincides with the known PSU(N) invariant at level K. If gcd(N,K)=d>1, then we show…
We describe a new approach to the canonical decompositions of 3-manifolds along tori and annuli due to Jaco-Shalen and Johannson (with ideas from Waldhausen) - the so-called JSJ-decomposition theorem. This approach gives an accessible proof of the decomposition theorem; in particular it does not use the annulus-torus theorems, and the theory of Seifert fibrations does not need to be developed in advance.
Every cusped, finite-volume hyperbolic three-manifold has a canonical decomposition into ideal polyhedra. We study the canonical decomposition of the hyperbolic manifold obtained by filling some (but not all) of the cusps with solid tori: in a broad range of cases, generic in an appropriate sense, this decomposition can be predicted from that of the unfilled manifold. As an example, we treat all hyperbolic fillings on one cusp of the Whitehead link complement.
We try to understand the geometric properties of $n$-manifolds ($n\geq 2$) with geometric structures modeled on $(\bR P^n, \PGL(n+1, \bR))$, i.e., $n$-manifolds with projectively flat torsion free affine connections. We define the notion of $i$-convexity of such manifolds due to Carriére for integers $i$, $1 \leq i \leq n-1$, which are generalization of convexity. Given a real projective $n$-manifold $M$, we show that the failure of an $(n-1)$-convexity of $M$ implies an existence of a certain geometric object, $n$-crescent, in the completion $\che M$ of the universal cover $\tilde M$ of $M$. …
In this article we consider a version of the geography question for simply-connected symplectic 4-manifolds that takes into account the divisibility of the canonical class as an additional parameter. We also find new examples of 4-manifolds admitting several symplectic structures, inequivalent under deformation and self-diffeomorphisms of the manifold.
We introduce a surgery operation on symplectic manifolds called coisotropic Luttinger surgery, which generalizes Luttinger surgery on Lagrangian tori in symplectic 4-manifolds. We use it to produce infinitely many distinct symplectic non-Kahler 6-manifolds $X$ with $c_1(X)=0$ which are not of the form $M\times F$ for $M$ a symplectic 4-manifold and $F$ a closed surface.
We prove certain weak or idealized existence results for minimizers of the natural quadratic curvature functionals on the space of metrics on 4-manifolds. Overall, we try to exhibit the relations with the picture in 3-dimensions provided by Thurston geometrization. The existence results apply in particular to the structure of the moduli spaces of such metrics, and as such generalize most of the known results for moduli of Einstein metrics.
In this paper we determine the integral homology and cohomology groups of a closed 4-manifold X obtained as the generalized fibre sum of two closed 4-manifolds M and N along embedded surfaces of genus g and self-intersection zero. If the homologies of the 4-manifolds are torsion free and the surfaces represent indivisible homology classes, we derive a formula for the intersection form of X. If in addition the 4-manifolds M and N are symplectic and the surfaces symplectically embedded we derive a formula for the canonical class of the symplectic fibre sum.
We introduce the notion of a `canonical' splitting over Z or ZxZ for a finitely generated group G. We show that when G happens to be the fundamental group of an orientable Haken manifold M with incompressible boundary, then the decomposition of the group naturally obtained from canonical splittings is closely related to the one given by the standard JSJ-decomposition of M. This leads to a new proof of Johannson's Deformation Theorem.
In short geometrization conjecture of W.\,Thurston (finally proved by G.~Perelman) says that any oriented $3$-manifold can be canonically partitioned into pieces, which have a geometric structure of one of the eight types. In the seminal paper (1991) M.\,W.\,Davis and T.\,Januszkiewicz introduced a wide class of $n$-dimensional manifolds -- small covers over simple $n$-polytopes. We give a complete answer to the following problem: to build an explicit canonical decomposition for any orientable $3$-manifold defined by a vector-colouring of a simple $3$-polytope, in particular for a small cover.…
We prove that every finite-volume hyperbolic 3-manifold M with p > 0 cusps admits a canonical, complete, piecewise Euclidean CAT(0) metric, with a canonical projection to a CAT(0) spine K. Moreover, (a) the universal cover of M endowed with the CAT(0) metric is a union of Euclidean half-spaces, glued together by identifying Euclidean polygons in their bounding planes by pairwise isometry (b)each cusp of M in the CAT(0) metric is a non-singular metric product of a (Euclidean) cusp torus and a half-line (c) all metric singularities are concentrated on the 1-skeleton of K, with cone angles a mult…
Let M be a closed oriented smooth 4-manifold admitting symplectic structures. If M is minimal and has b^+=1, we prove that there is a unique symplectic canonical class up to sign, and any real second cohomology class of positive square is represented by symplectic forms. Similar results hold when M is not minimal.
We present new definitions for and give a comprehensive treatment of the canonical compactification of configuration spaces due to Fulton-MacPherson and Axelrod-Singer in the setting of smooth manifolds, as well as a simplicial variant of this compactification initiated by Kontsevich. Our constructions are elementary and give simple global coordinates for the compactified configuration space of a general manifold embedded in Euclidean space. We stratify the canonical compactification, identifying the diffeomorphism types of the strata in terms of spaces of configurations in the tangent bundle,…