Functions on surfaces and constructions of manifolds in dimensions three, four and five

MaRDI QIDQ5136665zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors David Gay

Publication date 27 November 2020

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.01711

zbMATH Keywords

cobordismtrisection

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Bordism and cobordism theories and formal group laws in algebraic topology (55N22) General topology of 4-manifolds (57K40) Singularities of differentiable mappings in differential topology (57R45) (mathrm{O})- and (mathrm{SO})-cobordism (57R75)

Abstract: We offer a new proof that two closed oriented 4-manifolds are cobordant if their signatures agree, in the spirit of Lickorish's proof that all closed oriented 3-manifolds bound 4-manifolds. Where Lickorish uses Heegaard splittings we use trisections. In fact we begin with a subtle recasting of Lickorish's argument: Instead of factoring the gluing map for a Heegaard splitting as a product of Dehn twists, we encode each handlebody in a Heegaard splitting in terms of a Morse function on the surface and build the 4-manifold from a generic homotopy between the two functions. This extends up a dimension by encoding a trisection of a closed 4-manifold as a triangle (circle) of functions and constructing an associated 5-manifold from an extension to a 2-simplex (disk) of functions. This borrows ideas from Hatcher and Thurston's proof that the mapping class group of a surface is finitely presented.

Recommendations

• Trisecting 4-manifolds
• Trisections of 4-manifolds via Lefschetz fibrations
• Four-dimensional Haken cobordism theory
• Trisections of 5-manifolds
• Representing smooth \(4\)-manifolds as loops in the pants complex

Cited in

(4)

• The disk complex and topologically minimal surfaces in the 3-sphere
• CONSTRUCTIVE DESCRIPTION OF FUNCTION CLASSES ON SURFACES IN R^3 AND R^4
• A structure theorem for homology 4-manifolds with g₂\leq 5
• Uniqueness of 4-manifolds described as sequences of 3-d handlebodies

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