English

A topologically extendible mapping class that is not smoothly extendible

Geometric Topology 2025-06-18 v2

Abstract

We give an example of a smooth characteristic embedding of a torus in \s2×\s2#\s1×\s3\s^2 \times \s^2 \# \s^1 \times \s^3 such that there exists no diffeomorphism of the ambient 44-manifold that induces the Dehn twist along a meridian of the torus, but there exists a homeomorphism of the ambient 44-manifold, isotopic to identity, that induces the Dehn twist. As an application of our methods, we provide examples of two proper smooth embeddings of an annulus in \s2×\s2#\s1×\s3int(\D4)\s^2 \times \s^2 \# \s^1 \times \s^3 \setminus int(\D^4) which are topologically isotopic, but not smoothly isotopic (relative to boundary).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.23999,
  title  = {A topologically extendible mapping class that is not smoothly extendible},
  author = {Shital Lawande and Kuldeep Saha},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.23999},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

The statements of the main theorems were found to be incorrect. The Dehn twist along the meridinal curve is not extendible even topologically

R2 v1 2026-07-01T02:49:28.329Z