No Arabic abstract
We generalise the Kreck-Stolz invariants s_2 and s_3 by defining a new invariant, the t-invariant, for quaternionic line bundles E over closed spin-manifolds M of dimension 4k-1 with H^3(M; Q) = 0 such that c_2(E)in H^4(M) is torsion. The t-invariant classifies closed smooth oriented 2-connected rational homology 7-spheres up to almost-diffeomorphism, that is, diffeomorphism up to connected sum with an exotic sphere. It also detects exotic homeomorphisms between such manifolds. The t-invariant also gives information about quaternionic line bundles over a fixed manifold and we use it to give a new proof of a theorem of Feder and Gitler about the values of the second Chern classes of quaternionic line bundles over HP^k. The t-invariant for S^{4k-1} is closely related to the Adams e-invariant on the (4k-5)-stem.
This paper is devoted to the construction of differential geometric invariants for the classification of Quaternionic vector bundles. Provided that the base space is a smooth manifold of dimension two or three endowed with an involution that leaves fixed only a finite number of points, it is possible to prove that the Wess-Zumino term and the Chern-Simons invariant yield topological quantities able to distinguish between inequivalent realization of Quaternionic structures.
We extend the theory of Vassiliev (or finite type) invariants for knots to knotoids using two different approaches. Firstly, we take closures on knotoids to obtain knots and we use the Vassiliev invariants for knots, proving that these are knotoid isotopy invariant. Secondly, we define finite type invariants directly on knotoids, by extending knotoid invariants to singular knotoid invariants via the Vassiliev skein relation. Then, for spherical knotoids we show that there are non-trivial type-1 invariants, in contrast with classical knot theory where type-1 invariants vanish. We give a complete theory of type-1 invariants for spherical knotoids, by classifying linear chord diagrams of order one, and we present examples arising from the affine index polynomial and the extended bracket polynomial.
By use of H. C. Wangs bound on the radius of a ball embedded in the fundamental domain of a lattice of a semisimple Lie group, we construct an explicit lower bound for the volume of a quaternionic hyperbolic orbifold that depends only on dimension.
We develop a coarse notion of bundle and use it to understand the coarse geometry of group extensions and, more generally, groups acting on proper metric spaces. The results are particularly sharp for groups acting on (locally finite) trees with Abelian stabilizers, which we are able to classify completely.
The Turaev-Viro invariants are a powerful family of topological invariants for distinguishing between different 3-manifolds. They are invaluable for mathematical software, but current algorithms to compute them require exponential time. The invariants are parameterised by an integer $r geq 3$. We resolve the question of complexity for $r=3$ and $r=4$, giving simple proofs that computing Turaev-Viro invariants for $r=3$ is polynomial time, but for $r=4$ is #P-hard. Moreover, we give an explicit fixed-parameter tractable algorithm for arbitrary $r$, and show through concrete implementation and experimentation that this algorithm is practical---and indeed preferable---to the prior state of the art for real computation.