Department of Mathematics

Connected sums and boundary connected sums play important roles in the study of closed manifolds and manifolds with boundary, respectively. When working with open manifolds, a third variety of connected sum—the “end sum”—is useful. Each of these operations involves a number of arbitrary choices, making well-definedness of the resulting manifold a significant question. With regards to the end sum operation, we will discuss familiar situations where all goes smoothly (the notion of semistability plays a role here) and others where significant problems arise. Our analysis leads naturally into the subtle and interesting theory of infinitely generated abelian groups. The work to be presented in this talk is joint with Jack Calcut and Patrick Haggerty.