Universal quadratic forms and Whitney tower intersection invariants

zbMATH Open1264.57007arXiv1207.0109MaRDI QIDQ4900133FDOQ4900133

James Conant, Peter Teichner, Rob Schneiderman

Publication date: 11 January 2013

Abstract: The first part of this paper exposits a simple geometric description of the Kirby-Siebenmann invariant of a 4--manifold in terms of a quadratic refinement of its intersection form. This is the first in a sequence of higher-order intersection invariants of Whitney towers studied by the authors, particularly for the 4--ball. In the second part of this paper, a general theory of quadratic forms is developed and then specialized from the non-commutative to the commutative to finally, the symmetric settings. The intersection invariant for twisted Whitney towers is shown to be the universal symmetric refinement of the framed intersection invariant. As a corollary we obtain a short exact sequence that has been essential in the understanding of Whitney towers in the 4--ball.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.0109

zbMATH Keywords

Hermitianquadratic formWhitney towerintersection pairing

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

General binary quadratic forms (11E16)

Cited In (4)

• Introduction to Whitney towers
• Embedding surfaces in 4-manifolds
• The ubiquity of Sylvester forms in almost complete intersections
• Rational Whitney tower filtration of links

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