We show that tori in Engel 4-manifolds behave analogously to knots in contact 3-manifolds: Every torus with trivial normal bundle is isotopic to infinitely many distinct transverse tori, distinguished locally (and globally in the nullhomologous case) by their formal invariants. (Few examples of transverse tori were previously known.) We classify the formal invariants, which are richer than for transverse knots. We show that in an overtwisted Engel structure, up to homotopy through such structures, these invariants are a complete set of uniqueness obstructions, and every torus with trivial normal bundle can be made transverse realizing any combination of these invariants. Fixing Engel structures not known to be overtwisted, we explore the range of the primary invariants of given tori. A sample application is that many Engel manifolds admit infinitely many transverse homotopy classes of unknotted transverse tori such that each class contains infinitely many transverse isotopy classes.

We study smooth, proper embeddings of noncompact surfaces in 4-manifolds, focusing on exotic planes and annuli, i.e., embeddings pairwise homeomorphic to the standard embeddings of R^2 and R^2-int D^2 in R^4. We encounter two uncountable classes of exotic planes, with radically different properties. One class is simple enough that we exhibit explicit level diagrams of them without 2-handles. Diagrams from the other class seem intractable to draw, and require infinitely many 2-handles. We show that every compact surface embedded rel nonempty boundary in the 4-ball has interior pairwise homeomorphic to infinitely many smooth, proper embeddings in R^4. We also see that the almost-smooth, compact, embedded surfaces produced in 4-manifolds by Freedman theory must have singularities requiring infinitely many local minima in their radial functions. We construct exotic planes with uncountable group actions injecting into the pairwise mapping class group. This work raises many questions, some of which we list.

This note exhibits singular fibrations over the 2-sphere whose regular fibers are connected surfaces of arbitrarily high genus, but which admit no sections. These include achiral Lefschetz fibrations, as well as generic maps for which some disks cannot lift to sections -- in fact, neither hemisphere lifts.

We combine Freedman's topology with Eliashberg's holomorphic theory to construct Stein neighborhood systems in complex surfaces, and use these to study various notions of convexity and concavity. Every tame, topologically embedded 2-complex K in a complex surface, after C^0-small topological ambient isotopy, is the intersection of an uncountable nested family of Stein regular neighborhoods that are all topologically ambiently isotopic rel K, but frequently realize uncountably many diffeomorphism types. These arise from the Cantor set levels of a topological mapping cylinder. The boundaries of the neighborhoods are 3-manifolds that are only topologically embedded, but still satisfy a notion of pseudoconvexity. Such 3-manifolds share some basic properties of hypersurfaces that are strictly pseudoconvex in the usual smooth sense, but they are far more common. The complementary notion of topological pseudoconcavity is realized by uncountably many diffeomorphism types homeomorphic to R^4.

We study a notion of strict pseudoconvexity in the context of topologically (often unsmoothably) embedded 3-manifolds in complex surfaces. Topologically pseudoconvex (TPC) 3-manifolds behave similarly to their smooth analogues, cutting out open domains of holomorphy (Stein surfaces), but they are much more common. We provide tools for constructing TPC embeddings, and show that every closed, oriented 3-manifold M has a TPC embedding in a compact, complex surface (without boundary) realizing any homotopy class of almost-complex structures (the analogue of the homotopy class of the contact plane field in the smooth case). We prove our tool theorems with invariants that classify almost-complex structures on any 4-manifold homotopy equivalent to M. These invariants are amenable to computation and respected by homeomorphisms (not necessarily smooth). We study the two equivalence classes of smoothings on the product of a 3-manifold with a line, and on collared ends. Both classes of smoothings are realized by holomorphic embeddings exhibiting any preassigned homotopy class of almost-complex structures. One class arises from TPC embedded 3-manifolds, while the other likely does not.

For oriented manifolds of dimension at least 4 that are simply connected at infinity, it is known that end summing is a uniquely defined operation. Calcut and Haggerty showed that more complicated fundamental group behavior at infinity can lead to nonuniqueness. The present paper examines how and when uniqueness fails. Examples are given, in the categories TOP, PL and DIFF, of nonuniqueness that cannot be detected in a weaker category (including the homotopy category). In contrast, uniqueness is proved for Mittag-Leffler ends, and generalized to allow slides and cancellation of (possibly infinite) collections of 0- and 1-handles at infinity. Various applications are presented, including an analysis of how the monoid of smooth manifolds homeomorphic to R^4 acts on the smoothings of any noncompact 4-manifold.

We provide the first information on diffeotopy groups of exotic smoothings of R-4: For each of uncountably many smoothings, there are uncountably many isotopy classes of self-diffeomorphisms. We realize these by various explicit group actions. There are also actions at infinity by non-finitely generated groups, for which no nontrivial element extends over the whole manifold. In contrast, every diffeomorphism of the end of the universal R4 extends. Our techniques apply to many other open 4-manifolds, and are related to cork theory. We show that under broad hypotheses, cork twisting is equivalent (up to blowups) to twisting on an exotic R-4, and give applications.

We study exotic smoothings of open 4-manifolds using the minimal genus function and its analog for end homology. While traditional techniques in open 4-manifold smoothing theory give no control of minimal genera, we make progress by using the adjunction inequality for Stein surfaces. Smoothings can be constructed with much more control of these genus functions than the compact setting seems to allow. As an application, we expand the range of 4-manifolds known to have exotic smoothings (up to diffeomorphism). For example, every 2-handlebody interior (possibly infinite or nonorientable) has an exotic smoothing, and "most" have infinitely, or sometimes uncountably many, distinguished by the genus function and admitting Stein structures when orientable. Manifolds with 3-homology are also accessible. We investigate topological submanifolds of smooth 4-manifolds. Every domain of holomorphy (Stein open subset) in the complex plane $C^2$ is topologically isotopic to uncountably many other diffeomorphism types of domains of holomorphy with the same genus functions, or with varying but controlled genus functions.

The author recently proved the existence of an infinite order cork: a compact, contractible submanifold C of a 4-manifold and an infinite order diffeomorphism f of partial derivative C such that cutting out C and regluing it by distinct powers of f yields pairwise nondiffeomorphic manifolds. The present paper exhibits the first handle diagrams of this phenomenon, by translating the earlier proof into this language (for each of the infinitely many corks arising in the first paper). The cork twists in these papers are twists on incompressible tori. We give conditions guaranteeing that such twists do not change the diffeomorphism type of a 4-manifold, partially answering a question from the original paper. We also show that the "delta-moves" recently introduced by Akbulut are essentially equivalent to torus twists.

We construct a compact, contractible 4-manifold $C$, an infinite-order self-diffeomorphism $f$ of its boundary, and a smooth embedding of $C$ into a closed, simply connected 4-manifold $X$, such that the manifolds obtained by cutting $C$ out of $X$ and regluing it by powers of $f$ are all pairwise nondiffeomorphic. The manifold $C$ can be chosen from among infinitely many homeomorphism types, all obtained by attaching a 2-handle to the meridian of a thickened knot complement.

This paper investigates which smooth manifolds arise as quotients (orbit spaces) of flows of vector fields. Such quotient maps were already known to be surjective on fundamental groups, but this paper shows that every epimorphism of countably presented groups is induced by the quotient map of some flow, and that higher homology can also be controlled. Manifolds of fixed dimension arising as quotients of flows on Euclidean space realize all even (and some odd) intersection pairings, and all homotopy spheres of dimension at least 2 arise in this manner. Most Euclidean spaces of dimensions 5 and higher have families of topologically equivalent but smoothly inequivalent flows with quotient homeomorphic to a manifold with flexibly chosen homology. For m at least 2r>2, there is a topological flow on (R^{2r+1}-(8 points))xR^m that is unsmoothable, although smoothable near each orbit, with quotient an unsmoothable topological manifold.

A simple characterization is given of open subsets of a complex surface that smoothly perturb to Stein open subsets. As applications, complex 2-space C^2 contains domains of holomorphy (Stein open subsets) that are exotic R^4's, and others homotopy equivalent to the 2-sphere but cut out by smooth, compact 3-manifolds. Pseudoconvex embeddings of Brieskorn spheres and other 3-manifolds into complex surfaces are constructed, as are pseudoconcave holomorphic fillings (with disagreeing contact and boundary orientations). Pseudoconcave complex structures on Milnor fibers are found. A byproduct of this construction is a simple polynomial expression for the signature of the (p,q,npq-1) Milnor fiber. Akbulut corks in complex surfaces can always be chosen to be pseudoconvex or pseudoconcave submanifods. The main theorem is expressed via Stein handlebodies (possibly infinite), which are defined holomorphically in all dimensions by extending Stein theory to manifolds with noncompact boundary.

We study orbit spaces of generalized gradient vector fields for Morse functions. Typically, these orbit spaces are non-Hausdorff. Nevertheless, they are quite structured topologically and are amenable to study. We show that these orbit spaces are locally contractible. We also show that the quotient map associated to each such orbit space is a weak homotopy equivalence and has the path lifting property.

In classical covering space theory, a covering map induces an injection of fundamental groups. This paper reveals a dual property for certain quotient maps having connected fibers, with applications to orbit spaces of vector fields and leaf spaces in general.

While topologists have had possession of possible counterexamples to the smooth 4-dimensional Poincaré conjecture (SPC4) for over 30 years, until recently no invariant has existed which could potentially distinguish these examples from the standard 4-sphere. Rasmussen’s s-invariant, a slice obstruction within the general framework of Khovanov homology, changes this state of affairs. We studied a class of knots K for which nonzero s(K) would yield a counterexample to SPC4. Computations are extremely costly and we had only completed two tests for those K, with the computations showing that s was 0, when a landmark posting of Akbulut [3] altered the terrain. His posting, appearing only six days after our initial posting, proved that the family of “Cappell–Shaneson” homotopy spheres that we had geared up to study were in fact all standard. The method we describe remains viable but will have to be applied to other examples. Akbulut’s work makes SPC4 seem more plausible, and in another section of this paper we explain that SPC4 is equivalent to an appropriate generalization of Property R (“in S3, only an unknot can yield S1 × S2 under surgery”). We hope that this observation, and the rich relations between Property R and ideas such as taut foliations, contact geometry, and Heegaard Floer homology, will encourage 3-manifold topologists to look at SPC4.

Akbulut has recently shown that an infinite family of Cappell-Shaneson homotopy 4-spheres is diffeomorphic to the standard 4-sphere. In the present paper, a strictly larger family is shown to be standard by a simpler method. This new approach uses no Kirby calculus except through the relatively simple 1979 paper of Akbulut and Kirby showing that the simplest example with untwisted framing is standard. Instead, hidden symmetries of the original Cappell-Shaneson construction are exploited. In the course of the proof, we give an example showing that Gluck twists can sometimes be undone using symmetries of fishtail neighborhoods.

If there are any 2-component counterexamples to the Generalized Property R Conjecture, a least genus component of all such counterexamples cannot be a fibered knot. Furthermore, the monodromy of a fibered component of any such counterexample has unexpected restrictions. The simplest plausible counterexample to the Generalized Property R Conjecture could be a 2-component link containing the square knot. We characterize all two-component links that contain the square knot and which surger to (S^1 x S^2) # (S^1 x S^2). We exhibit a family of such links that are probably counterexamples to Generalized Property R. These links can be used to generate slice knots that are not known to be ribbon.

In classical covering space theory, a covering map induces an injection of fundamental groups. This note reveals a dual property for quotient maps having connected fibers, with applications to orbit spaces of smooth vector fields and leaf spaces in general.