4-Manifolds

Selman Akbulut is a Turkish mathematician and a Professor at Michigan State University. His research is in topology and he has specifically worked on handlebody theory, low-dimensional manifolds, symplectic topology and G2 manifolds with success in developing 4-dimensional handlebody techniques, settling conjectures and solving problems.

• 1: 4-manifold handlebodies 2: Building low dimensional manifolds 3: Gluing 4 manifolds along their boundaries 4: Bundles 5: 3-manifolds 6: Operations 7: Lefschetz Fibrations 8: Symplectic Manifolds 9: Exotic 4-manifolds 10: Cork decomposition 11: Covering spaces 12: Complex surfaces 13: Seiberg-Witten invariants 14: Some applications

This book is about the art of proving theorems about 4-manifolds by mental visualization and direct interaction with their depictions. Its existence is justifed by the need for an updated treatment...and the need to set out a unifed presentation of the tools and knowledge which have proved most useful over the relatively unique research history of its author.