Fixed-point free circle actions on 4-manifolds

DOI10.2140/AGT.2015.15.3253MaRDI QIDQ907765zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 26 January 2016

Published in Algebraic \& Geometric Topology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.0852

circle actions four-manifolds geometrization of 3-orbifolds Rips-Sela theory

Topological methods in group theory (57M07) General geometric structures on low-dimensional manifolds (57M50) Compact Lie groups of differentiable transformations (57S15)

Abstract: This paper is concerned with fixed-point free

S^{1}

-actions (smooth or locally linear) on orientable 4-manifolds. We show that the fundamental group plays a predominant role in the equivariant classification of such 4-manifolds. In particular, it is shown that for any finitely presented group with infinite center, there are at most finitely many distinct smooth (resp. topological) 4-manifolds which support a fixed-point free smooth (resp. locally linear)

S^{1}

-action and realize the given group as the fundamental group. A similar statement holds for the number of equivalence classes of fixed-point free

S^{1}

-actions under some further conditions on the fundamental group. The connection between the classification of the

S^{1}

-manifolds and the fundamental group is given by a certain decomposition, called fiber-sum decomposition, of the

S^{1}

-manifolds. More concretely, each fiber-sum decomposition naturally gives rise to a Z-splitting of the fundamental group. There are two technical results in this paper which play a central role in our considerations. One states that the Z-splitting is a canonical JSJ decomposition of the fundamental group in the sense of Rips and Sela. Another asserts that if the fundamental group has infinite center, then the homotopy class of principal orbits of any fixed-point free

S^{1}

-action on the 4-manifold must be infinite, unless the 4-manifold is the mapping torus of a periodic diffeomorphism of some elliptic 3-manifold. The paper ends with two questions concerning the topological nature of the smooth classification and the Seiberg-Witten invariants of 4-manifolds admitting a smooth fixed-point free

S^{1}

-action.

Review text

This paper considers the classification of smooth or locally linear free \(S^1\) actions of \(4\)-manifolds. One approach to this is to consider the quotient space. This approach is particularly useful when the action has fixed points. In this paper, Chen takes a different approach -- he considers the decomposition of such manifolds into pieces that may be connected via fiber sum. Such a decomposition leads to a description of the fundamental group as a graph of groups. He proves that any four-dimensional free \(S^1\)-manifold having a fundamental group with infinite center has a fiber-sum decomposition. Under reasonable assumptions the decomposition of the fundamental group induced by the fiber sum decomposition coincides with the canonical JSJ decomposition of the group. By combining results from combinatorial group theory with the geometrization theorem and orbifold theorem in \(3\)-dimensions, Chen is able to prove several strong results about the classification of smooth, free \(S^1\) four-manifolds. In particular under appropriate assumptions on the fundamental group any isomorphism between fundamental groups of fiber-sum indecomposable manifolds arises from an equivariant diffeomorphism. If the manifold has a non-trivial fiber-sum decomposition then there is only a finite number of diffeomorphism classes possible and only a finite number of possible actions on each.

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