English

Pseudo-isotopy versus isotopy for homeomorphisms of 4-manifolds

Geometric Topology 2025-06-16 v1

Abstract

We define obstructions which obstruct topological pseudo-isotopies from being isotopic to isotopies in dimension four. These match the smooth obstructions of Hatcher-Wagoner for smooth pseudo-isotopies, and accordingly are valued in certain Whitehead groups. We show that our obstructions are fully realisable, and we use these realisations to build homeomorphisms of Y×S1Y\times S^1 for many 3-manifolds YY that are pseudo-isotopic to the identity but not isotopic to the identity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.11905,
  title  = {Pseudo-isotopy versus isotopy for homeomorphisms of 4-manifolds},
  author = {Daniel Galvin and Isacco Nonino},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.11905},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

55 pages, 10 figures. Comments welcome!