EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: The geography problem on 4-manifolds: 10/8 + 4
Speaker: Zhouli Xu
Speaker Info: MIT
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

A fundamental problem in 4-dimensional topology is the following geography question: "which simply connected topological 4-manifolds admit a smooth structure?" After the celebrated work of Kirby-Siebenmann, Freedman, and Donaldson, the last uncharted territory of this geography question is the "11/8-Conjecture''. This conjecture, proposed by Matsumoto, states that for any smooth spin 4-manifold, the ratio of its second-Betti number and signature is least 11/8.

Furuta proved the ''10/8+2''-Theorem by studying the existence of certain Pin(2)-equivariant stable maps between representation spheres. In this talk, we will present a complete solution to this problem by analyzing the Pin(2)-equivariant Mahowald invariants. In particular, we improve Furuta's result into a ''10/8+4''-Theorem. Furthermore, we show that within the current existing framework of Seiberg-Witten theory, this is the limit. This is joint work with Mike Hopkins, Jianfeng Lin and XiaoLin Danny Shi.