The Wild World of 4-Manifolds

The Wild World of 4-Manifolds PDF Author: Alexandru Scorpan
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821837494
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 642

Get Book Here

Book Description
What a wonderful book! I strongly recommend this book to anyone, especially graduate students, interested in getting a sense of 4-manifolds. --MAA Reviews The book gives an excellent overview of 4-manifolds, with many figures and historical notes. Graduate students, nonexperts, and experts alike will enjoy browsing through it. -- Robion C. Kirby, University of California, Berkeley This book offers a panorama of the topology of simply connected smooth manifolds of dimension four. Dimension four is unlike any other dimension; it is large enough to have room for wild things to happen, but small enough so that there is no room to undo the wildness. For example, only manifolds of dimension four can exhibit infinitely many distinct smooth structures. Indeed, their topology remains the least understood today. To put things in context, the book starts with a survey of higher dimensions and of topological 4-manifolds. In the second part, the main invariant of a 4-manifold--the intersection form--and its interaction with the topology of the manifold are investigated. In the third part, as an important source of examples, complex surfaces are reviewed. In the final fourth part of the book, gauge theory is presented; this differential-geometric method has brought to light how unwieldy smooth 4-manifolds truly are, and while bringing new insights, has raised more questions than answers. The structure of the book is modular, organized into a main track of about two hundred pages, augmented by extensive notes at the end of each chapter, where many extra details, proofs and developments are presented. To help the reader, the text is peppered with over 250 illustrations and has an extensive index.

The Wild World of 4-Manifolds

The Wild World of 4-Manifolds PDF Author: Alexandru Scorpan
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821837494
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 642

Get Book Here

Book Description
What a wonderful book! I strongly recommend this book to anyone, especially graduate students, interested in getting a sense of 4-manifolds. --MAA Reviews The book gives an excellent overview of 4-manifolds, with many figures and historical notes. Graduate students, nonexperts, and experts alike will enjoy browsing through it. -- Robion C. Kirby, University of California, Berkeley This book offers a panorama of the topology of simply connected smooth manifolds of dimension four. Dimension four is unlike any other dimension; it is large enough to have room for wild things to happen, but small enough so that there is no room to undo the wildness. For example, only manifolds of dimension four can exhibit infinitely many distinct smooth structures. Indeed, their topology remains the least understood today. To put things in context, the book starts with a survey of higher dimensions and of topological 4-manifolds. In the second part, the main invariant of a 4-manifold--the intersection form--and its interaction with the topology of the manifold are investigated. In the third part, as an important source of examples, complex surfaces are reviewed. In the final fourth part of the book, gauge theory is presented; this differential-geometric method has brought to light how unwieldy smooth 4-manifolds truly are, and while bringing new insights, has raised more questions than answers. The structure of the book is modular, organized into a main track of about two hundred pages, augmented by extensive notes at the end of each chapter, where many extra details, proofs and developments are presented. To help the reader, the text is peppered with over 250 illustrations and has an extensive index.

4-Manifolds and Kirby Calculus

4-Manifolds and Kirby Calculus PDF Author: Robert E. Gompf
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821809946
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 576

Get Book Here

Book Description
Presents an exposition of Kirby calculus, or handle body theory on 4-manifolds. This book includes such topics as branched coverings and the geography of complex surfaces, elliptic and Lefschetz fibrations, $h$-cobordisms, symplectic 4-manifolds, and Stein surfaces.

4-manifolds

4-manifolds PDF Author: Selman Akbulut
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198784864
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents the topology of smooth 4-manifolds in an intuitive self-contained way, developed over a number of years by Professor Akbulut. The text is aimed at graduate students and focuses on the teaching and learning of the subject, giving a direct approach to constructions and theorems which are supplemented by exercises to help the reader work through the details not covered in the proofs. The book contains a hundred colour illustrations to demonstrate the ideas rather than providing long-winded and potentially unclear explanations. Key results have been selected that relate to the material discussed and the author has provided examples of how to analyse them with the techniques developed in earlier chapters.

Instantons and Four-Manifolds

Instantons and Four-Manifolds PDF Author: Daniel S. Freed
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461397030
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the reviews of the first edition: "This book exposes the beautiful confluence of deep techniques and ideas from mathematical physics and the topological study of the differentiable structure of compact four-dimensional manifolds, compact spaces locally modeled on the world in which we live and operate... The book is filled with insightful remarks, proofs, and contributions that have never before appeared in print. For anyone attempting to understand the work of Donaldson and the applications of gauge theories to four-dimensional topology, the book is a must." #Science#1 "I would strongly advise the graduate student or working mathematician who wishes to learn the analytic aspects of this subject to begin with Freed and Uhlenbeck's book." #Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society#2

The Topology of 4-Manifolds

The Topology of 4-Manifolds PDF Author: Robion C. Kirby
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 354046171X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 114

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents the classical theorems about simply connected smooth 4-manifolds: intersection forms and homotopy type, oriented and spin bordism, the index theorem, Wall's diffeomorphisms and h-cobordism, and Rohlin's theorem. Most of the proofs are new or are returbishings of post proofs; all are geometric and make us of handlebody theory. There is a new proof of Rohlin's theorem using spin structures. There is an introduction to Casson handles and Freedman's work including a chapter of unpublished proofs on exotic R4's. The reader needs an understanding of smooth manifolds and characteristic classes in low dimensions. The book should be useful to beginning researchers in 4-manifolds.

The Geometry of Four-manifolds

The Geometry of Four-manifolds PDF Author: S. K. Donaldson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198502692
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Get Book Here

Book Description
This text provides an accessible account to the modern study of the geometry of four-manifolds. Prerequisites are a firm grounding in differential topology and geometry, as may be gained from the first year of a graduate course.

Topology of 4-Manifolds (PMS-39), Volume 39

Topology of 4-Manifolds (PMS-39), Volume 39 PDF Author: Michael H. Freedman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400861063
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the great achievements of contemporary mathematics is the new understanding of four dimensions. Michael Freedman and Frank Quinn have been the principals in the geometric and topological development of this subject, proving the Poincar and Annulus conjectures respectively. Recognition for this work includes the award of the Fields Medal of the International Congress of Mathematicians to Freedman in 1986. In Topology of 4-Manifolds these authors have collaborated to give a complete and accessible account of the current state of knowledge in this field. The basic material has been considerably simplified from the original publications, and should be accessible to most graduate students. The advanced material goes well beyond the literature; nearly one-third of the book is new. This work is indispensable for any topologist whose work includes four dimensions. It is a valuable reference for geometers and physicists who need an awareness of the topological side of the field. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Smooth Four-Manifolds and Complex Surfaces

Smooth Four-Manifolds and Complex Surfaces PDF Author: Robert Friedman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3662030284
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1961 Smale established the generalized Poincare Conjecture in dimensions greater than or equal to 5 [129] and proceeded to prove the h-cobordism theorem [130]. This result inaugurated a major effort to classify all possible smooth and topological structures on manifolds of dimension at least 5. By the mid 1970's the main outlines of this theory were complete, and explicit answers (especially concerning simply connected manifolds) as well as general qualitative results had been obtained. As an example of such a qualitative result, a closed, simply connected manifold of dimension 2: 5 is determined up to finitely many diffeomorphism possibilities by its homotopy type and its Pontrjagin classes. There are similar results for self-diffeomorphisms, which, at least in the simply connected case, say that the group of self-diffeomorphisms of a closed manifold M of dimension at least 5 is commensurate with an arithmetic subgroup of the linear algebraic group of all automorphisms of its so-called rational minimal model which preserve the Pontrjagin classes [131]. Once the high dimensional theory was in good shape, attention shifted to the remaining, and seemingly exceptional, dimensions 3 and 4. The theory behind the results for manifolds of dimension at least 5 does not carryover to manifolds of these low dimensions, essentially because there is no longer enough room to maneuver. Thus new ideas are necessary to study manifolds of these "low" dimensions.

Gauge Theory and the Topology of Four-Manifolds

Gauge Theory and the Topology of Four-Manifolds PDF Author: Robert Friedman
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821805916
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
This text is part of the IAS/Park City Mathematics series and focuses on gauge theory and the topology of four-manifolds.

Topological Quantum Field Theory and Four Manifolds

Topological Quantum Field Theory and Four Manifolds PDF Author: Jose Labastida
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402031777
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Get Book Here

Book Description
The emergence of topological quantum ?eld theory has been one of the most important breakthroughs which have occurred in the context of ma- ematical physics in the last century, a century characterizedbyindependent developments of the main ideas in both disciplines, physics and mathematics, which has concluded with two decades of strong interaction between them, where physics, as in previous centuries, has acted as a source of new mat- matics. Topological quantum ?eld theories constitute the core of these p- nomena, although the main drivingforce behind it has been the enormous e?ort made in theoretical particle physics to understand string theory as a theory able to unify the four fundamental interactions observed in nature. These theories set up a new realm where both disciplines pro?t from each other. Although the most striking results have appeared on the mathema- calside,theoreticalphysicshasclearlyalsobene?tted,sincethecorresponding developments have helped better to understand aspects of the fundamentals of ?eld and string theory.