The Topology of 4-Manifolds
The Topology of 4-Manifolds

Author: Robion C. Kirby

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2006-11-14

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 354046171X

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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 There is an introduction to Casson handles and Freedman's work including a chapter of unpublished proofs on exotic R4's. The reader needs an understanding of smooth manifolds and characteristic classes in low dimensions.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.

Surgery on Simply-Connected Manifolds
Surgery on Simply-Connected Manifolds

Author: William Browder

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 364250020X

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This book is an exposition of the technique of surgery on simply-connected smooth manifolds. Systematic study of differentiable manifolds using these ideas was begun by Milnor [45] and Wallace [68] and developed extensively in the last ten years. It is now possible to give a reasonably complete theory of simply-connected manifolds of dimension ~ 5 using this approach and that is what I will try to begin here. The emphasis has been placed on stating and proving the general results necessary to apply this method in various contexts. In Chapter II, these results are stated, and then applications are given to characterizing the homotopy type of differentiable manifolds and classifying manifolds within a given homotopy type. This theory was first extensively developed in Kervaire and Milnor [34] in the case of homotopy spheres, globalized by S. P. Novikov [49] and the author [6] for closed 1-connected manifolds, and extended to the bounded case by Wall [65] and Golo [23]. The thesis of Sullivan [62] reformed the theory in an elegant way in terms of classifying spaces.

Lectures on the h-Cobordism Theorem
Lectures on the h-Cobordism Theorem

Author: John Milnor

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2025-03-25

Total Pages: 125

ISBN-13: 0691273715

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Important lectures on differential topology by acclaimed mathematician John Milnor These are notes from lectures that John Milnor delivered as a seminar on differential topology in 1963 at Princeton University. These lectures give a new proof of the h-cobordism theorem that is different from the original proof presented by Stephen Smale. Milnor's goal was to provide a fully rigorous proof in terms of Morse functions. This book remains an important resource in the application of Morse theory.

The Algebraic Characterization of Geometric 4-Manifolds
The Algebraic Characterization of Geometric 4-Manifolds

Author: J. A. Hillman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994-02-03

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0521467780

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This book describes work on the characterization of closed 4-manifolds in terms of familiar invariants such as Euler characteristic, fundamental group, and Stiefel-Whitney classes. Using techniques from homological group theory, the theory of 3-manifolds and topological surgery, infrasolvmanifolds are characterized up to homeomorphism, and surface bundles are characterized up to simple homotopy equivalence. Non-orientable cases are also considered wherever possible, and in the final chapter the results obtained earlier are applied to 2-knots and complex analytic surfaces.

Algebraic L-theory and Topological Manifolds
Algebraic L-theory and Topological Manifolds

Author: Andrew Ranicki

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-12-10

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780521420242

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Assuming no previous acquaintance with surgery theory and justifying all the algebraic concepts used by their relevance to topology, Dr Ranicki explains the applications of quadratic forms to the classification of topological manifolds, in a unified algebraic framework.

Surgery Theory
Surgery Theory

Author: Wolfgang Lück

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 956

ISBN-13: 3031563344

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This monograph provides a comprehensive introduction to surgery theory, the main tool in the classification of manifolds. Surgery theory was developed to carry out the so-called Surgery Program, a basic strategy to decide whether two closed manifolds are homeomorphic or diffeomorphic. This book provides a detailed explanation of all the ingredients necessary for carrying out the surgery program, as well as an in-depth discussion of the obstructions that arise. The components include the surgery step, the surgery obstruction groups, surgery obstructions, and the surgery exact sequence. This machinery is applied to homotopy spheres, the classification of certain fake spaces, and topological rigidity. The book also offers a detailed description of Ranicki's chain complex version, complete with a proof of its equivalence to the classical approach developed by Browder, Novikov, Sullivan, and Wall. This book has been written for learning surgery theory and includes numerous exercises. With full proofs and detailed explanations, it also provides an invaluable reference for working mathematicians. Each chapter has been designed to be largely self-contained and includes a guide to help readers navigate the material, making the book highly suitable for lecture courses, seminars, and reading courses.