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Daniel Ruberman

Publications and source records attributed to Daniel Ruberman.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2010

Smooth concordance of links topologically concordant to the Hopf link

It was shown by Jim Davis that a 2-component link with Alexander polynomial one is topologically concordant to the Hopf link. In this paper, we show that there is a 2-component link with Alexander polynomial one that has unknotted components and is not smoothly concordant to the Hopf link, answering a question of Jim Davis. We construct infinitely many concordance classes of such links, and show that they have the stronger property of not being smoothly concordant to the Hopf link with knots tied in the components.

math.GT↗
arXiv2008

Topological triviality of smoothly knotted surfaces in 4-manifolds

Some generalizations and variations of the Fintushel-Stern rim surgery are known to produce smoothly knotted surfaces. We show that if the fundamental groups of their complements are cyclic, then these surfaces are topologically unknotted. Using a twist-spinning construction from high-dimensional knot theory, we construct examples of knotted surfaces whose complements have cyclic fundamental groups.

math.GT↗
arXiv2008

Smooth surfaces with non-simply-connected complements

We give two constructions of surfaces in simply-connected 4-manifolds with non simply-connected complements. One is an iteration of the twisted rim surgery introduced by the first author. We also construct, for any group G satisfying some simple conditions, a simply-connected symplectic manifold containing a symplectic surface whose complement has fundamental group G. In each case, we produce infinitely many smoothly inequivalent surfaces that are equivalent up to smooth s-cobordism and hence are topologically equivalent for good groups.

math.GT↗
arXiv2007

Dirac operators on manifolds with periodic ends

This paper studies Dirac operators on end-periodic spin manifolds of dimension at least 4. We provide a sufficient condition for such an operator to be Fredholm for a generic end-periodic metric; this condition is shown to be necessary in dimension 4. We make use of end-periodic Dirac operators to give an analytical interpretation of an invariant of non-orientable smooth 4-manifolds due to Cappell and Shaneson. From this interpretation we show that some exotic non-orientable 4-manifolds do not admit a metric of positive scalar curvature.

math.GT↗
arXiv2007

Knot concordance and Heegaard Floer homology invariants in branched covers

By studying the Heegaard Floer homology of the preimage of a knot K in S^3 inside its double branched cover, we develop simple obstructions to K having finite order in the classical smooth concordance group. As an application, we prove that all 2-bridge knots of crossing number at most 12 for which the smooth concordance order was previously unknown have infinite smooth concordance order.

math.GT↗
arXiv2005

Rohlin's invariant and gauge theory III. Homology 4--tori

This is the third in our series of papers relating gauge theoretic invariants of certain 4-manifolds with invariants of 3-manifolds derived from Rohlin's theorem. Such relations are well-known in dimension three, starting with Casson's integral lift of the Rohlin invariant of a homology sphere. We consider two invariants of a spin 4-manifold that has the integral homology of a 4-torus. The first is a degree zero Donaldson invariant, counting flat connections on a certain SO(3)-bundle. The second, which depends on the choice of a 1-dimensional cohomology class, is a combination of Rohlin invariants of a 3-manifold carrying the dual homology class. We prove that these invariants, suitably normalized, agree modulo 2, by showing that they coincide with the quadruple cup product of 1-dimensional cohomology classes.

math.GT↗
arXiv2005

Casson--type invariants in dimension four

This article surveys our ongoing project about the relationship between invariants extending the classical Rohlin invariant of homology spheres and those coming from 4-dimensional (Yang-Mills) gauge theory. The main conjecture towards which this project is directed is that the Rohlin invariant and the gauge theoretic invariant coincide for a homology $S^1\times S^3$. We discuss the implications of this conjecture for some classical problems in low-dimensional topology, and progress we have made towards proving the conjecture.

math.GT↗
arXiv2004

Rohlin's invariant and gauge theory II. Mapping tori

This is the second in a series of papers studying the relationship between Rohlin's theorem and gauge theory. We discuss an invariant of a homology S^1 cross S^3 defined by Furuta and Ohta as an analogue of Casson's invariant for homology 3-spheres. Our main result is a calculation of the Furuta-Ohta invariant for the mapping torus of a finite-order diffeomorphism of a homology sphere. The answer is the equivariant Casson invariant (Collin-Saveliev 2001) if the action has fixed points, and a version of the Boyer-Nicas (1990) invariant if the action is free. We deduce, for finite-order mapping tori, the conjecture of Furuta and Ohta that their invariant reduces mod 2 to the Rohlin invariant of a manifold carrying a generator of the third homology group. Under some transversality assumptions, we show that the Furuta-Ohta invariant coincides with the Lefschetz number of the action on Floer homology. Comparing our two answers yields an example of a diffeomorphism acting trivially on the representation variety but non-trivially on Floer homology.

math.GT↗
arXiv2003

Rohlin's invariant and gauge theory, I. Homology 3-tori

This is the first in a series of papers exploring the relationship between the Rohlin invariant and gauge theory. We discuss the Casson-type invariant of a 3-manifold with the integral homology of a torus, given by counting projectively flat connections. We show that its mod 2 evaluation is given by the triple cup product in cohomology, and so it coincides with a sum of Rohlin invariants. Our counting argument makes use of a natural action of the first cohomology on the moduli space of projectively flat connections; along the way we construct perturbations that are equivariant with respect to this action. Combined with the Floer exact triangle, this gives a purely gauge-theoretic proof that Casson's homology sphere invariant reduces mod 2 to the Rohlin invariant.

math.GT↗
arXiv2002

The Seiberg-Witten invariants of manifolds with wells of negative curvature

We extend the vanishing theorem for the Seiberg-Witten invariants of a manifold with positive scalar curvature to the case when the curvature is allowed to be negative on a set of small volume. (The precise curvature bounds are described in the paper.) The idea is to combine the method of `semigroup domination' with the Weitzenbock formula. The same curvature hypothesis implies the vanishing of the Seiberg-Witten invariant of any finite covering space. We also show that, in high dimensions, a spin manifold with mostly positive scalar curvature in fact admits a metric of positive scalar curvature.

math.GT↗
arXiv2002

Positive scalar curvature, diffeomorphisms and the Seiberg-Witten invariants

We study the space of positive scalar curvature (psc) metrics on a 4-manifold, and give examples of simply connected manifolds for which it is disconnected. These examples imply that concordance of psc metrics does not imply isotopy of such metrics. This is demonstrated using a modification of the 1-parameter Seiberg-Witten invariants which we introduced in earlier work. The invariant shows that the diffeomorphism group of the underlying 4-manifold is disconnected. We also study the moduli space of positive scalar curvature metrics modulo diffeomorphism, and give examples to show that this space can be disconnected. The (non-orientable) 4--manifolds in this case are explicitly described, and the components in the moduli space are distinguished by a Pin^c eta invariant.

math.DG↗
arXiv2000

Mod 2 Seiberg-Witten invariants of homology tori

We show that the mod 2 Seiberg-Witten invariant can be determined for a spin manifold X which has the same homology groups as the 4-torus. The value depends on the structure of the cohomology ring of X, and in particular on the 4-fold cup product on H^1(X). We also consider some examples of homology tori.

math.DG↗
arXiv2000

Embedding tangles in links

We reprove and extend a result of David Krebes (J. Knot Theory Ramif. 8 (1999), 321-352) giving an obstruction to embedding a tangle T into a link L. Closing the tangle up in the two obvious ways gives rise to two links, the numerator and denominator links n(T) and d(T). Applying a homological argument to the 2-fold branched covers of these links, we show that the gcd of the determinants of the numerator and denominator divides the determinant of L.

math.GT↗
arXiv1999

A polynomial invariant of diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds

We use a 1-parameter version of gauge theory to investigate the topology of the diffeomorphism group of 4-manifolds. A polynomial invariant, analogous to the Donaldson polynomial, is defined, and is used to show that the diffeomorphism group of certain simply-connected 4-manifolds has infinitely generated π_0.

math.GT↗
arXiv1998

An obstruction to smooth isotopy in dimension 4

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.

math.GT↗
arXiv1997

Isospectrality and 3-manifold groups

The relationship between the Chern-Simons invariant and eta-invariant of a 3-manifold is shown to lead to an obstruction to a group being the fundamental group of a closed oriented 3-manifold. The proof uses Sunada's construction of isospectral manifolds as covering spaces over a common base space.

math.GT↗