The space of Fredholm operators of fixed index is stratified by submanifolds according to the dimension of the kernel. Geometric considerations often lead to questions about the intersections of concrete families of elliptic operators with these submanifolds: Are the intersections nonempty? Are they smooth? What are their codimensions? The purpose of this article is to develop tools to address these questions in equivariant situations. An important motivation for this work are transversality questions for multiple covers of J-holomorphic maps. As an application, we use our framework to give a concise exposition of Wendl’s proof of the superrigidity conjecture.

We prove Farber’s conjecture on the stable topological complexity of configuration spaces of graphs. The conjecture follows from a general lower bound derived from recent insights into the topological complexity of aspherical spaces. Our arguments apply equally to higher topological complexity.

We study the $E_2$ -algebra $\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{*,1}:= \coprod _{g\geqslant 0}\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{g,1}$ consisting of free loop spaces of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces with one parametrised boundary component, and compute the homotopy type of the group completion $\Omega B\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{*,1}$ : it is the product of $\Omega ^{\infty }\mathbf {MTSO}(2)$ with a certain free $\Omega ^{\infty }$ -space depending on the family of all boundary-irreducible mapping classes in all mapping class groups $\Gamma _{g,n}$ with $g\geqslant 0$ and $n\geqslant 1$ .

We study a version of the Fukaya category of a symplectic 2-torus with coefficients in a locally constant sheaf of rings. The sheaf of rings includes a globally defined Novikov parameter that plays its usual role in organising polygon counts by area. It also includes a ring of constants whose variation around the the torus can be encoded by a pair of commuting ring automorphisms. When these constants are perfectoid of characteristic p, one of the holonomies is trivial and the other is the $p^{th}$ power map, it is possible in a limited way to specialise the Novikov parameter to 1. We prove that the Dehn twist ring defined there is isomorphic to the homogeneous coordinate ring of a scheme introduced by Fargues and Fontaine: their ‘curve of p-adic Hodge theory’ for the local field $\mathbf {F}_p(\!(z)\!)$ .

In this article, we establish an explicit correspondence between kissing reflection groups and critically fixed anti-rational maps. The correspondence, which is expressed using simple planar graphs, has several dynamical consequences. As an application of this correspondence, we give complete answers to geometric mating problems for critically fixed anti-rational maps.

We address primary decomposition conjectures for knot concordance groups, which predict direct sum decompositions into primary parts. We show that the smooth concordance group of topologically slice knots has a large subgroup for which the conjectures are true and there are infinitely many primary parts, each of which has infinite rank. This supports the conjectures for topologically slice knots. We also prove analogues for the associated graded groups of the bipolar filtration of topologically slice knots. Among ingredients of the proof, we use amenable $L^2$ -signatures, Ozsváth-Szabó d-invariants and Némethi’s result on Heegaard Floer homology of Seifert 3-manifolds. In an appendix, we present a general formulation of the notion of primary decomposition.

Let S be an orientable surface of finite type. Using Pho-on’s infinite unicorn paths, we prove the hyperfiniteness of orbit equivalence relations induced by the actions of the mapping class group of S on the Gromov boundaries of the arc graph and the curve graph of S. In the curve graph case, this strengthens the results of Hamenstädt and Kida that this action is universally amenable and that the mapping class group of S is exact.

We prove that every spherical object in the derived Fukaya category of a closed surface of genus at least $2$ whose Chern character represents a nonzero Hochschild homology class is quasi-isomorphic to a simple closed curve equipped with a rank $1$ local system. (The homological hypothesis is necessary.) This largely answers a question of Haiden, Katzarkov and Kontsevich. It follows that there is a natural surjection from the autoequivalence group of the Fukaya category to the mapping class group. The proofs appeal to and illustrate numerous recent developments: quiver algebra models for wrapped categories, sheafifying the Fukaya category, equivariant Floer theory for finite and continuous group actions and homological mirror symmetry. An application to high-dimensional symplectic mapping class groups is included.

The Torelli group of $W_g = \#^g S^n \times S^n$ is the group of diffeomorphisms of $W_g$ fixing a disc that act trivially on $H_n(W_g;\mathbb{Z} )$ . The rational cohomology groups of the Torelli group are representations of an arithmetic subgroup of $\text{Sp}_{2g}(\mathbb{Z} )$ or $\text{O}_{g,g}(\mathbb{Z} )$ . In this article we prove that for $2n \geq 6$ and $g \geq 2$ , they are in fact algebraic representations. Combined with previous work, this determines the rational cohomology of the Torelli group in a stable range. We further prove that the classifying space of the Torelli group is nilpotent.

For a prime p and a field k of characteristic $p,$ we define Steenrod operations $P^{n}_{k}$ on motivic cohomology with $\mathbb {F}_{p}$ -coefficients of smooth varieties defined over the base field $k.$ We show that $P^{n}_{k}$ is the pth power on $H^{2n,n}(-,\mathbb {F}_{p}) \cong CH^{n}(-)/p$ and prove an instability result for the operations. Restricted to mod p Chow groups, we show that the operations satisfy the expected Adem relations and Cartan formula. Using these new operations, we remove previous restrictions on the characteristic of the base field for Rost’s degree formula. Over a base field of characteristic $2,$ we obtain new results on quadratic forms.

Several well-known open questions (such as: are all groups sofic/hyperlinear?) have a common form: can all groups be approximated by asymptotic homomorphisms into the symmetric groups $\text{Sym}(n)$ (in the sofic case) or the finite-dimensional unitary groups $\text{U}(n)$ (in the hyperlinear case)? In the case of $\text{U}(n)$, the question can be asked with respect to different metrics and norms. This paper answers, for the first time, one of these versions, showing that there exist finitely presented groups which are not approximated by $\text{U}(n)$ with respect to the Frobenius norm $\Vert T\Vert _{\text{Frob}}=\sqrt{\sum _{i,j=1}^{n}|T_{ij}|^{2}},T=[T_{ij}]_{i,j=1}^{n}\in \text{M}_{n}(\mathbb{C})$. Our strategy is to show that some higher dimensional cohomology vanishing phenomena implies stability, that is, every Frobenius-approximate homomorphism into finite-dimensional unitary groups is close to an actual homomorphism. This is combined with existence results of certain nonresidually finite central extensions of lattices in some simple $p$-adic Lie groups. These groups act on high-rank Bruhat–Tits buildings and satisfy the needed vanishing cohomology phenomenon and are thus stable and not Frobenius-approximated.

In order to treat multiplicative phenomena in twisted (co)homology, we introduce a new point-set-level framework for parametrized homotopy theory. We provide a convolution smash product that descends to the corresponding $\infty$-categorical product and allows for convenient constructions of commutative parametrized ring spectra. As an immediate application, we compare various models for generalized Thom spectra. In a companion paper, this approach is used to compare homotopical and operator algebraic models for twisted $K$-theory.

We use methods from the cohomology of groups to describe the finite groups which can act freely and homologically trivially on closed 3-manifolds which are rational homology spheres.

We construct infinitely many compact, smooth 4-manifolds which are homotopy equivalent to $S^{2}$ but do not admit a spine (that is, a piecewise linear embedding of $S^{2}$ that realizes the homotopy equivalence). This is the remaining case in the existence problem for codimension-2 spines in simply connected manifolds. The obstruction comes from the Heegaard Floer $d$ invariants.

In this paper we use tools from differential topology to give a geometric description of cohomology for Hilbert manifolds. Our model is Quillen’s geometric description of cobordism groups for finite-dimensional smooth manifolds [Quillen, ‘Elementary proofs of some results of cobordism theory using steenrod operations’, Adv. Math., 7 (1971)]. Quillen stresses the fact that this construction allows the definition of Gysin maps for ‘oriented’ proper maps. For finite-dimensional manifolds one has a Gysin map in singular cohomology which is based on Poincaré duality, hence it is not clear how to extend it to infinite-dimensional manifolds. But perhaps one can overcome this difficulty by giving a Quillen type description of singular cohomology for Hilbert manifolds. This is what we do in this paper. Besides constructing a general Gysin map, one of our motivations was a geometric construction of equivariant cohomology, which even for a point is the cohomology of the infinite-dimensional space $BG$, which has a Hilbert manifold model. Besides that, we demonstrate the use of such a geometric description of cohomology by several other applications. We give a quick description of characteristic classes of a finite-dimensional vector bundle and apply it to a generalized Steenrod representation problem for Hilbert manifolds and define a notion of a degree of proper oriented Fredholm maps of index $0$.

We exhibit a knot $P$ in the solid torus, representing a generator of first homology, such that for any knot $K$ in the 3-sphere, the satellite knot with pattern $P$ and companion $K$ is not smoothly slice in any homology 4-ball. As a consequence, we obtain a knot in a homology 3-sphere that does not bound a piecewise-linear disk in any homology 4-ball.

We give two applications of the 2-Engel relation, classically studied in finite and Lie groups, to the 4-dimensional (4D) topological surgery conjecture. The A–B slice problem, a reformulation of the surgery conjecture for free groups, is shown to admit a homotopy solution. We also exhibit a new collection of universal surgery problems, defined using ramifications of homotopically trivial links. More generally we show how $n$-Engel relations arise from higher-order double points of surfaces in 4-space.

We find defining equations for the Shimura curve of discriminant 15 over $\mathbb{Z}[1/15]$. We then determine the graded ring of automorphic forms over the 2-adic integers, as well as the higher cohomology. We apply this to calculate the homotopy groups of a spectrum of ‘topological automorphic forms’ associated to this curve, as well as one associated to a quotient by an Atkin–Lehner involution.

We construct a hyperbolic group with a hyperbolic subgroup for which inclusion does not induce a continuous map of the boundaries.