arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Paul Kirk.
We use moduli spaces of instantons and Chern-Simons invariants of flat connections to prove that the Whitehead doubles of (2,2^n-1) torus knots are independent in the smooth knot concordance group; that is, they freely generate a subgroup of infinite rank.
We review the SO(3) instanton gauge theory of Fintushel and Stern and recast it in the context of 4-manifolds with cylindrical ends. Appli- cations to the Z/2-homology cobordism group of Z/2-homology 3-spheres are given.
We show that the subgroup of the knot concordance group generated by links of isolated complex singularities intersects the subgroup of algebraically slice knots in an infinite rank subgroup.
Given a knot complement X and its p-fold cyclic cover X_p, we identify twisted polynomials associated to 1-dimensional linear representations of the fundamental group of X_p with twisted polynomials associated to related p-dimensional linear representations of the fundamental group of X. This provides a simpler and faster algorithm to compute these twisted polynomials, allowing us to prove that 16 (of 18 previously unknown) algebraically slice knots of 12 or fewer crossings are not slice. We also use this improved algorithm to prove that the 24 mutants of the pretzel knot P(3,7,9,11,15), corresponding to permutations of (7,9,11,15), represent distinct concordance classes.
For each pair $(e,σ)$ of integers satisfying $2e+3σ\ge 0$, $σ\leq -2$, and $e+σ\equiv 0\pmod{4}$, with four exceptions, we construct a minimal, simply connected symplectic 4-manifold with Euler characteristic $e$ and signature $σ$. We also produce simply connected, minimal symplectic 4-manifolds with signature zero (resp. signature -1) with Euler characteristic $4k$ (resp. $4k+1$) for all $k\ge 46$ (resp. $k\ge 49$).
In this article we use the technique of Luttinger surgery to produce small examples of simply connected and non-simply connected minimal symplectic 4-manifolds. In particular, we construct: (1) An example of a minimal symplectic 4-manifold that is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to CP^2#3(-CP^2) which contains a symplectic surface of genus 2, trivial normal bundle, and simply connected complement and a disjoint nullhomologous Lagrangian torus with the fundamental group of the complement generated by one of the loops on the torus. (2) A minimal symplectic 4-manifold that is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to 3CP^2#5(-CP^2) which has two essential Lagrangian tori with simply connected complement. These manifolds can be used to replace E(1) in many known theorems and constructions. Examples in this article include the smallest known minimal symplectic manifolds with abelian fundamental groups including symplectic manifolds with finite and infinite cyclic fundamental group and Euler characteristic 6.
In this paper we construct a minimal symplectic 4-manifold and prove it is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to CP^2 # 3(-CP^2)
In this article we construct a minimal symplectic 4-manifold R that has small Euler characteristic (e(R)=8) and two essential Lagrangian tori with nice properties. These properties make R particularly suitable for constructing interesting examples of symplectic manifolds with small Euler characteristic. In particular, we construct an exotic symplectic CP^2# 5(-CP^2), the smallest known minimal symplectic 4-manifold with pi_1=Z, the smallest known minimal symplectic 4-manifolds with pi_1=Z/a + Z/b for all a,b in Z, and the smallest known minimal symplectic 4-manifold with pi_1=Z^3. We use the pi_1=Z example to derive a significantly better upper bound on the minimal Euler characteristic of all symplectic 4-manifolds with a prescribed fundamental group.
For any given finitely presented group G there exists a closed oriented 4-manifold with fundamental group G. What pairs of integers can occur as the signature and Euler characteristic of such a 4-manifold? The first part of this paper develops general theory related to this question and applies this theory to resolve the question for a large collection of groups, including surface groups and 3-manifold groups. The second part of the paper offers an extended analysis in the case of free abelian groups, G = Z^n. The paper concludes with a list of open problems related to the general question.
In this paper we construct a family of symplectic 4--manifolds with positive signature for any given fundamental group $G$ that approaches the BMY line. The family is used to show that one cannot hope to do better than than the BMY inequality in finding a lower bound for the function $f=χ+bσ$ on the class of all minimal symplectic 4-manifolds with a given fundamental group.
In this article we study the problem of minimizing $aχ+bσ$ on the class of all symplectic 4--manifolds with prescribed fundamental group $G$ ($χ$ is the Euler characteristic, $σ$ is the signature, and $a,b\in \BR$), focusing on the important cases $χ$, $χ+σ$ and $2χ+3σ$. In certain situations we can derive lower bounds for these functions and describe symplectic 4-manifolds which are minimizers. We derive an upper bound for the minimum of $χ$ and $χ+σ$ in terms of the presentation of $G$.
The Hausmann-Weinberger invariant of a group G is the minimal Euler characteristic of a closed orientable 4-manifold M with fundamental group G. We compute this invariant for finitely generated free abelian groups and estimate the invariant for all finitely generated abelian groups.
This article is a follow up of the previous article of the authors on the analytic surgery of eta- and rho-invariants. We investigate in detail the (Atiyah-Patodi-Singer)-rho-invariant for manifolds with boundary. First we generalize the cut-and-paste formula to arbitrary boundary conditions. A priori the rho-invariant is an invariant of the Riemannian structure and a representation of the fundamental group. We show, however, that the dependence on the metric is only very mild: it is independent of the metric in the interior and the dependence on the metric on the boundary is only up to its pseudo--isotopy class. Furthermore, we show that this cannot be improved: we give explicit examples and a theoretical argument that different metrics on the boundary in general give rise to different rho-invariants. Theoretically, this follows from an interpretation of the exponentiated rho-invariant as a covariantly constant section of a determinant bundle over a certain moduli space of flat connections and Riemannian metrics on the boundary. Finally we extend to manifolds with boundary the results of Farber-Levine-Weinberger concerning the homotopy invariance of the rho-invariant and spectral flow of the odd signature operator.
The existence and continuity for the Calderon projector of the perturbed odd signature operator on a 3-manifold is established. As an application we give a new proof of a result of Taubes relating the mod 2 spectral flow of a family of operators on a homology 3-sphere with the difference in local intersection numbers of the character varieties coming from a Heegard decomposition.
Several proofs have been published of the Mod Z gluing formula for the eta-invariant of a Dirac operator. However, so far the integer contribution to the gluing formula for the eta-invariant is left obscure in the literature. In this article we present a gluing formula for the eta-invariant which expresses the integer contribution as a triple index involving the boundary conditions and the Calderon projectors of the two parts of the decomposition. The main ingredients of our presentation are the Scott-Wojciechowski theorem for the determinant of a Dirac operator on a manifold with boundary and the approach of Bruning-Lesch to the mod Z gluing formula. Our presentation includes careful constructions of the Maslov index and triple index in a symplectic Hilbert space. As a byproduct we give intuitively appealing proofs of two theorems of Nicolaescu on the spectral flow of Dirac operators. As an application of our methods, we carry out a detailed analysis of the eta-invariant of the odd signature operator coupled to a flat connection using adiabatic methods. This is used to extend the definition of the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer rho-invariant to manifolds with boundary. We derive a ``non-additivity'' formula for the Atiyah-Patodi-Singer rho-invariant and relate it to Wall's non-additivity formula for the signature of even-dimensional manifolds.
We show how to compute the spectral flow of the odd signature operator $\pm *d_{a_t}-d_{a_t}*$ along an analytic path of flat connections $a_t$ on a bundle over a closed odd-dimensional manifold in terms of Massey products in the DGLA of bundle-valued differential forms. To obtain this information, we set up a sequence of cochain complexes $\{\calg^*_n,δ_n\}$, for $n=0,1,2,\ldots$ and Hermitian forms $$Q_n:\calg_n\times\calg_n\ra \bbbC$$ whose signatures determine the spectral flow through $t=0$. The complexes and Hermitian forms are constructed using Massey products.