This book consists of a selection of articles devoted to new ideas and developments in low dimensional topology. Low dimensions refer to dimensions three and four for the topology of manifolds and their submanifolds. Thus we have papers related to both manifolds and to knotted submanifolds of dimension one in three (classical knot theory) and two in four (surfaces in four dimensional spaces). Some of the work involves virtual knot theory where the knots are abstractions of classical knots but can be represented by knots embedded in surfaces. This leads both to new interactions with classical topology and to new interactions with essential combinatorics.

This proceedings volume presents a diverse collection of high-quality, state-of-the-art research and survey articles written by top experts in low-dimensional topology and its applications. The focal topics include the wide range of historical and contemporary invariants of knots and links and related topics such as three- and four-dimensional manifolds, braids, virtual knot theory, quantum invariants, braids, skein modules and knot algebras, link homology, quandles and their homology; hyperbolic knots and geometric structures of three-dimensional manifolds; the mechanism of topological surgery in physical processes, knots in Nature in the sense of physical knots with applications to polymers, DNA enzyme mechanisms, and protein structure and function. The contents is based on contributions presented at the International Conference on Knots, Low-Dimensional Topology and Applications – Knots in Hellas 2016, which was held at the International Olympic Academy in Greece in July 2016. The goal of the international conference was to promote the exchange of methods and ideas across disciplines and generations, from graduate students to senior researchers, and to explore fundamental research problems in the broad fields of knot theory and low-dimensional topology. This book will benefit all researchers who wish to take their research in new directions, to learn about new tools and methods, and to discover relevant and recent literature for future study.

This book contains an in-depth overview of the current state of the recently emerged and rapidly growing theory of Gnk groups, picture-valued invariants, and braids for arbitrary manifolds. Equivalence relations arising in low-dimensional topology and combinatorial group theory inevitably lead to the study of invariants, and good invariants should be strong and apparent. An interesting case of such invariants is picture-valued invariants, whose values are not algebraic objects, but geometrical constructions, like graphs or polyhedra.In 2015, V O Manturov defined a two-parametric family of groups Gnk and formulated the following principle: if dynamical systems describing a motion of n particles possess a nice codimension 1 property governed by exactly k particles then these dynamical systems possess topological invariants valued in Gnk.The book is devoted to various realisations and generalisations of this principle in the broad sense. The groups Gnk have many epimorphisms onto free products of cyclic groups; hence, invariants constructed from them are powerful enough and easy to compare. However, this construction does not work when we try to deal with points on a 2-surface, since there may be infinitely many geodesics passing through two points. That leads to the notion of another family of groups — Γnk, which give rise to braids on arbitrary manifolds yielding invariants of arbitrary manifolds.

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference celebrating the work of Steven Boyer, held from June 2–6, 2018, at Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada. Boyer's contributions to research in low-dimensional geometry and topology, and to the Canadian mathematical community, were recognized during the conference. The articles cover a broad range of topics related, but not limited, to the topology and geometry of 3-manifolds, properties of their fundamental groups and associated representation varieties.

Wise describes a stream of geometric group theory connecting many of the classically considered groups arising in combinatorial group theory with right-angled Artin groups. He writes for new or seasoned researchers who have completed at least an introductory course of geometric groups theory or even just hyperbolic groups, but says some comfort with graphs of groups would be helpful. His topics include non-positively curved cube complexes, virtual specialness of malnormal amalgams, finiteness properties of the dual cube complex, walls in cubical small-cancellation theory, and hyperbolicity and quasiconvexity detection. Color drawings illustrate. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Mathematical gauge theory studies connections on principal bundles, or, more precisely, the solution spaces of certain partial differential equations for such connections. Historically, these equations have come from mathematical physics, and play an important role in the description of the electro-weak and strong nuclear forces. The use of gauge theory as a tool for studying topological properties of four-manifolds was pioneered by the fundamental work of Simon Donaldson in theearly 1980s, and was revolutionized by the introduction of the Seiberg-Witten equations in the mid-1990s. Since the birth of the subject, it has retained its close connection with symplectic topology. The analogy between these two fields of study was further underscored by Andreas Floer's constructionof an infinite-dimensional variant of Morse theory that applies in two a priori different contexts: either to define symplectic invariants for pairs of Lagrangian submanifolds of a symplectic manifold, or to define topological This volume is based on lecture courses and advanced seminars given at the 2004 Clay Mathematics Institute Summer School at the Alfred Renyi Institute of Mathematics in Budapest, Hungary. Several of the authors have added a considerable amount of additional material tothat presented at the school, and the resulting volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to current research, covering material from Heegaard Floer homology, contact geometry, smooth four-manifold topology, and symplectic four-manifolds. Information for our distributors: Titles in this seriesare copublished with the Clay Mathematics Institute (Cambridge, MA).

The authors construct Heegaard Floer theory for 3-manifolds with connected boundary. The theory associates to an oriented, parametrized two-manifold a differential graded algebra. For a three-manifold with parametrized boundary, the invariant comes in two different versions, one of which (type D) is a module over the algebra and the other of which (type A) is an A∞ module. Both are well-defined up to chain homotopy equivalence. For a decomposition of a 3-manifold into two pieces, the A∞ tensor product of the type D module of one piece and the type A module from the other piece is ^HF of the glued manifold. As a special case of the construction, the authors specialize to the case of three-manifolds with torus boundary. This case can be used to give another proof of the surgery exact triangle for ^HF. The authors relate the bordered Floer homology of a three-manifold with torus boundary with the knot Floer homology of a filling.