Manifolds and Disc-presheaves
arXiv:2509.26392
Abstract
This essay explains an approach to the study of smooth manifolds which compares them to presheaves on a category of discs, also known as embedding calculus. We highlight recent work that shows this approach has many desirable properties, as well as recent applications demonstrating its strength.
20 pages, 1 figure. Contribution to the Proceedings of the 2026 ICM