Diagrams for surface isotopies in 4-manifolds

Abstract:

I will demonstrate a method of drawing diagrams for a surface smoothly embedded into an arbitrary \(4\)-manifold, and show that any two diagrams of smoothly isotopic surfaces are related by a sequence of simple moves (6 elementary moves + isotopy). This generalizes work in \(S^4\) of Swenton and Kearton-Kurlin. Through correspondence with bridge trisections, this implies that a surface in a trisected \(4\)-manifold has a unique bridge trisection up to perturbation, proving a conjecture of Meier and Zupan.

This work is joint with Mark Hughes and Seungwon Kim.