TOPOLOGICAL 4-MANIFOLDS WITH 4-DIMENSIONAL FUNDAMENTAL GROUP

Let $\pi$ be a group satisfying the Farrell–Jones conjecture and assume that $B\pi$ is a 4-dimensional Poincaré duality space. We consider topological, closed, connected manifolds with fundamental group $\pi$ whose canonical map to $B\pi$ has degree 1, and show that two such manifolds are s-cobordant if and only if their equivariant intersection forms are isometric and they have the same Kirby–Siebenmann invariant. If $\pi$ is good in the sense of Freedman, it follows that two such manifolds are homeomorphic if and only if they are homotopy equivalent and have the same Kirby–Siebenmann invariant. This shows rigidity in many cases that lie between aspherical 4-manifolds, where rigidity is expected by Borel’s conjecture, and simply connected manifolds where rigidity is a consequence of Freedman’s classification results.

Supersymmetry, Ricci flat manifolds and the String Landscape

A longstanding question in superstring/M theory is does it predict supersymmetry below the string scale? We formulate and discuss a necessary condition for this to be true; this is the mathematical conjecture that all stable, compact Ricci flat manifolds have special holonomy in dimensions below eleven. Almost equivalent is the proposal that the landscape of all geometric, stable, string/M theory compactifications to Minkowski spacetime (at leading order) are supersymmetric. For simply connected manifolds, we collect together a number of physically relevant mathematical results, emphasising some key outstanding problems and perhaps less well known results. For non-simply connected, non-supersymmetric Ricci flat manifolds we demonstrate that many cases suffer from generalised Witten bubble of nothing instabilities.

SIMPLY CONNECTED, SPINELESS 4-MANIFOLDS

We construct infinitely many compact, smooth 4-manifolds which are homotopy equivalent to$S^{2}$but do not admit a spine (that is, a piecewise linear embedding of$S^{2}$that realizes the homotopy equivalence). This is the remaining case in the existence problem for codimension-2 spines in simply connected manifolds. The obstruction comes from the Heegaard Floer$d$invariants.