arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Andras I. Stipsicz.
For each nonnegative integer m we show that any closed, oriented topological four-manifold with fundamental group Z_{4m+2} and odd intersection form, with possibly seven exceptions, either admits no smooth structure or admits infinitely many distinct smooth structures up to diffeomorphism. Moreover, we construct infinite families of non-complex irreducible fake projective planes with diverse fundamental groups.
Inspired by a recent result of Levine-Lidman-Piccirillo, we construct infinitely many exotic smooth structures on some closed four-manifolds with definite intersection form and fundamental group isomorphic to $\Z /2\Z$. Similar constructions provide exotic smooth structures on further four-manifolds with fundamental group $Z/2\Z$, including examples with even $b_2^+$.
We study the set $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ of framed smoothly slice links which lie on the boundary of the complement of a 1-handlebody in a closed, simply connected, smooth 4-manifold $M$. We show that $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ is well-defined and describe how it relates to exotic phenomena in dimension four. In particular, in the case when $X$ is smooth, with a handle decompositions with no 1-handles and homeomorphic to but not smoothly embeddable in $D^4$, our results tell us that $X$ is exotic if and only if there is a link $L\hookrightarrow S^3$ which is smoothly slice in $X$, but not in $D^4$. Furthermore, we extend the notion of high genus 2-handle attachment, introduced by Hayden and Piccirillo, to prove that exotic 4-disks that are smoothly embeddable in $D^4$, and therefore possible counterexamples to the smooth 4-dimensional Schönflies conjecture, cannot be distinguished from $D^4$ only by comparing the slice genus functions of links.
We introduce a numerical invariant β(K) of a knot K which measures how non-alternating K is. We prove an inequality between β(K) and the (knot Floer) thickness of K. As an application we show that all Montesinos knots have thickness at most one.
Using the covering involution on the double branched cover of the three-sphere branched along a knot, and adapting ideas of Hendricks-Manolescu and Hendricks-Hom-Lidman, we define new knot invariants and apply them to deduce novel linear independence results in the smooth concordance group of knots.
We show examples of pairs of smooth, compact, homeomorphic 4-manifolds, whose diffeomorphism types are distinguished by the topology of the singular sets of smooth stable maps defined on them. In this distinction we rely on results from Seiberg-Witten theory.
Suppose that the 3-manifold M is given by integral surgery along a link L in S^3. In the following we construct a stable map from M to the plane, whose singular set is canonically oriented. We obtain upper bounds for the minimal numbers of crossings and non-simple singularities and of connected components of fibers of stable maps from M to the plane in terms of properties of L.
We consider a stabilized version of hat Heegaard Floer homology of a 3-manifold Y (i.e. the U=0 variant of Heegaard Floer homology for closed 3-manifolds). We give a combinatorial algorithm for constructing this invariant, starting from a Heegaard decomposition for Y, and give a combinatorial proof of its invariance properties.
We derive new existence results for tight contact structures on certain 3-manifolds which can be presented as surgery along specific knots in S^3. Indeed, we extend our earlier results on knots with maximal Thurston-Bennequin number being equal to 2g-1 to knots for which the maximal self-linking number satisfies the same equality. In the argument (using contact surgery) we define an invariant for transverse knots in contact 3-manifolds under the assumption that either the knot is null-homologous or the 3-manifold has no S^1xS^2-factor in its prime decomposition, and we study its properties using the Ozsvath-Szabo contact invariant.
An important class of contact 3--manifolds are those that arise as links of rational surface singularities with reduced fundamental cycle. We explicitly describe symplectic caps (concave fillings) of such contact 3--manifolds. As an application, we present a new obstruction for such singularities to admit rational homology disk smoothings.
We classify the resolution graphs of weighted homogeneous surface singularities which admit rational homology disk smoothings. The nonexistence of rational homology disk smoothings is shown by symplectic geometric methods, while the existence is verified via smoothings of negative weights. In particular, it is shown that a (negative definite) starshaped plumbing tree gives rise to a weighted homogeneous singularity admitting a rational homology disk smoothing if and only if the Milnor fillable contact structure of the link admits a weak symplectic rational homology disk filling.
We define Floer homology theories for oriented, singular knots in S^3 and show that one of these theories can be defined combinatorially for planar singular knots.
Suppose that L is a null--homologous Legendrian knot in a contact 3--manifold. We determine the connection between the sutured invariant of the complement of L and the Legendrian invariant defined by Lisca, Ozsvath, Stipsicz and Szabo. In particular, we derive a vanishing theorem for the Legendrian invariant in the presence of Giroux torsion in the complement of the knot, and reprove several known properties of the Legendrian invariant from this perspective.
We show that every negative definite configuration of symplectic surfaces in a symplectic 4--manifold has a strongly symplectically convex neighborhood. We use this to show that, if a negative definite configuration satisfies an additional negativity condition at each surface in the configuration, and if the complex singularity with resolution diffeomorphic to a neighborhood of the configuration has a smoothing, then the configuration can be symplectically replaced by the smoothing of the singularity. This generalizes the symplectic rational blowdown procedure used in recent constructions of small exotic 4--manifolds.
We show that for rational surface singularities with odd determinant the mu-bar invariant defined by W. Neumann is an obstruction for the link of the singularity to bound a rational homology 4-ball. We identify the mu-bar invariant with the corresponding correction term in Heegaard Floer theory.
In this paper we give a necessary combinatorial condition for a negative--definite plumbing tree to be suitable for rational blow--down, or to be the graph of a complex surface singularity which admits a rational homology disk smoothing. New examples of surface singularities with rational homology disk smoothings are also presented; these include singularities with resolution graph having valency four nodes.
We determine the closed, oriented Seifert fibered 3-manifolds which carry positive tight contact structures. Our main tool is a new non-vanishing criterion for the contact Ozsvath-Szabo invariant.
We verify that the rational blow-down schemes along certain Seifert fibered 3-manifolds found by the second author, Szabo and Wahl are, in fact, symplectic operations.