The Topology Of 4 Manifolds
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Topology of 4-Manifolds
Author: Michael H. Freedman
language: en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date: 2014-07-14
One of the great achievements of contemporary mathematics is the new understanding of four dimensions. Michael Freedman and Frank Quinn have been the principals in the geometric and topological development of this subject, proving the Poincar and Annulus conjectures respectively. Recognition for this work includes the award of the Fields Medal of the International Congress of Mathematicians to Freedman in 1986. In Topology of 4-Manifolds these authors have collaborated to give a complete and accessible account of the current state of knowledge in this field. The basic material has been considerably simplified from the original publications, and should be accessible to most graduate students. The advanced material goes well beyond the literature; nearly one-third of the book is new. This work is indispensable for any topologist whose work includes four dimensions. It is a valuable reference for geometers and physicists who need an awareness of the topological side of the field. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The Wild World of 4-Manifolds
Author: Alexandru Scorpan
language: en
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Release Date: 2005-05-10
What a wonderful book! I strongly recommend this book to anyone, especially graduate students, interested in getting a sense of 4-manifolds. --MAA Reviews The book gives an excellent overview of 4-manifolds, with many figures and historical notes. Graduate students, nonexperts, and experts alike will enjoy browsing through it. -- Robion C. Kirby, University of California, Berkeley This book offers a panorama of the topology of simply connected smooth manifolds of dimension four. Dimension four is unlike any other dimension; it is large enough to have room for wild things to happen, but small enough so that there is no room to undo the wildness. For example, only manifolds of dimension four can exhibit infinitely many distinct smooth structures. Indeed, their topology remains the least understood today. To put things in context, the book starts with a survey of higher dimensions and of topological 4-manifolds. In the second part, the main invariant of a 4-manifold--the intersection form--and its interaction with the topology of the manifold are investigated. In the third part, as an important source of examples, complex surfaces are reviewed. In the final fourth part of the book, gauge theory is presented; this differential-geometric method has brought to light how unwieldy smooth 4-manifolds truly are, and while bringing new insights, has raised more questions than answers. The structure of the book is modular, organized into a main track of about two hundred pages, augmented by extensive notes at the end of each chapter, where many extra details, proofs and developments are presented. To help the reader, the text is peppered with over 250 illustrations and has an extensive index.
The Seiberg-Witten Equations and Applications to the Topology of Smooth Four-manifolds
Author: John W. Morgan
language: en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date: 1996
The recent introduction of the Seiberg-Witten invariants of smooth four-manifolds has revolutionized the study of those manifolds. The invariants are gauge-theoretic in nature and are close cousins of the much-studied SU(2)-invariants defined over fifteen years ago by Donaldson. On a practical level, the new invariants have proved to be more powerful and have led to a vast generalization of earlier results. This book is an introduction to the Seiberg-Witten invariants. The work begins with a review of the classical material on Spin c structures and their associated Dirac operators. Next comes a discussion of the Seiberg-Witten equations, which is set in the context of nonlinear elliptic operators on an appropriate infinite dimensional space of configurations. It is demonstrated that the space of solutions to these equations, called the Seiberg-Witten moduli space, is finite dimensional, and its dimension is then computed. In contrast to the SU(2)-case, the Seiberg-Witten moduli spaces are shown to be compact. The Seiberg-Witten invariant is then essentially the homology class in the space of configurations represented by the Seiberg-Witten moduli space. The last chapter gives a flavor for the applications of these new invariants by computing the invariants for most Kahler surfaces and then deriving some basic toological consequences for these surfaces.