Basic Geometric Constructions

Abstract

Basic geometric constructions, including tubing, boundary twisting, pushing down intersections, and contraction followed by push-off are presented. These moves are used repeatedly later in the proof. New, detailed pictures illustrating these constructions are provided. The Clifford torus at an intersection point between two surfaces in 4-dimensional space is described. The chapter closes with an important application of some of these moves called the Geometric Casson Lemma. This lemma upgrades algebraically dual spheres to geometrically dual spheres, at the cost of introducing more self-intersections. It is also shown that an immersed Whitney move is a regular homotopy of the associated surfaces.