Embedded surfaces with trivial extendable mapping class groups in simply connected $4$-manifolds
Abstract
For every , every closed, connected, oriented, simply connected smooth -manifold , and every knot , we construct infinitely many pairwise topologically inequivalent smoothly embedded oriented genus- surfaces whose orientation-preserving extendable mapping class subgroups are trivial in both the topological and smooth categories and whose first Alexander modules are isomorphic to the Alexander module of . In particular, there are infinitely many such surfaces with vanishing first Alexander module. The construction is supported in a -ball. Although their Alexander data are prescribed independently, the surfaces are distinguished, and their mapping-class rigidity is detected, by the nonabelian centralizer structure of their exterior groups.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2608.01504,
title = {Embedded surfaces with trivial extendable mapping class groups in simply connected $4$-manifolds},
author = {Weizhe Niu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.01504},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
84 pages, 3 figures. Comments welcome