Description
Book SynopsisThis book presents the topology of smooth 4-manifolds in an intuitive self-contained way, developed over a number of years by Professor Akbulut. The text is aimed at graduate students and focuses on the teaching and learning of the subject, giving a direct approach to constructions and theorems which are supplemented by exercises to help the reader work through the details not covered in the proofs. The book contains a hundred colour illustrations to demonstrate the ideas rather than providing long-winded and potentially unclear explanations. Key results have been selected that relate to the material discussed and the author has provided examples of how to analyse them with the techniques developed in earlier chapters.
Trade ReviewThis 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. * Jonathan D. Williams, MathSciNet *
Table of Contents1: 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
