We show that any two same-genus, oriented, boundary parallel surfaces bounded by a non-split, alternating link into the 4-ball are smoothly isotopic relative to the boundary. In other words, any same-genus Seifert surfaces for a non-split, alternating link become smoothly isotopic relative to the boundary once their interiors are pushed into the 4-ball. We conclude that a smooth surface in $S^4$ obtained by gluing two Seifert surfaces for a non-split alternating link is always smoothly unknotted.

We improve, by a factor of 2, known homology stability ranges for the integral homology of symplectic groups over commutative local rings with infinite residue field and show that the obstruction to further stability is bounded below by Milnor–Witt K-theory. In particular, our stability range is optimal in many cases.

In this paper, we give a complete topological and smooth classification of non-invertible Anosov maps on torus. We show that two non-invertible Anosov maps on torus are topologically conjugate if and only if their corresponding periodic points have the same Lyapunov exponents on the stable bundles. As a corollary, if two $C^r$ non-invertible Anosov maps on torus are topologically conjugate, then the conjugacy is $C^r$-smooth along the stable foliation. Moreover, we show that the smooth conjugacy class of a non-invertible Anosov map on torus is completely determined by the Jacobians of return maps at periodic points.

While the splinter property is a local property for Noetherian schemes in characteristic zero, Bhatt observed that it imposes strong conditions on the global geometry of proper schemes in positive characteristic. We show that if a proper scheme over a field of positive characteristic is a splinter, then its Nori fundamental group scheme is trivial and its Kodaira dimension is negative. In another direction, Bhatt also showed that any splinter in positive characteristic is a derived splinter. We ask whether the splinter property is a derived invariant for projective varieties in positive characteristic and give a positive answer for normal Gorenstein projective varieties with big anticanonical divisor. We also show that global F-regularity is a derived invariant for normal Gorenstein projective varieties in positive characteristic.

We consider the Harder–Narasimhan formalism on the category of normed isocrystals and show that the Harder–Narasimhan filtration is compatible with tensor products which generalizes a result of Cornut. As an application of this result, we are able to define a (weak) Harder–Narasimhan stratification on the $B_{\mathrm{dR}}^+$-affine Grassmannian for arbitrary $(G, b, \mu)$. When $\mu$ is minuscule, it corresponds to the Harder–Narasimhan stratification on the flag varieties defined by Dat, Orlik and Rapoport. Moreover, when b is basic, it has been studied by Nguyen and Viehmann, and Shen. We study the basic geometric properties of the Harder–Narasimhan stratification, such as non-emptiness, dimension and its relation with other stratifications.