English

Diffeotopy groups of non-compact 4-manifolds

Geometric Topology 2024-06-18 v2

Abstract

We provide information on diffeotopy groups of exotic smoothings of punctured 4-manifolds, extending previous results on diffeotopy groups of exotic R4\mathbb{R}^4's. In particular, we prove that for a smoothable 4-manifold MM and for a non-empty, discrete set of points SM˚S \subsetneq \mathring{M}, there are uncountably many distinct smoothings of MSM\smallsetminus S whose diffeotopy groups are uncountable. We then prove that for a smoothable 4-manifold MM and for a non-empty, discrete set of points SM˚S \subsetneq \mathring{M}, there exists a smoothing of MSM\smallsetminus S whose diffeotopy groups have similar properties as RU\mathcal{R}_U, Freedman and Taylor's universal R4\mathbb{R}^4. Moreover, we prove that if MM is non-smoothable, both results still hold under the assumption that S2|S| \ge 2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2203.09433,
  title  = {Diffeotopy groups of non-compact 4-manifolds},
  author = {Isacco Nonino},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.09433},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

19 pages, 7 figures. This is the revised version. The paper has been now accepted for publication in the Michigan Mathematical Journal

R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:17:21.155Z