English

Some remarks on $h$-cobordisms between smooth 4-manifolds

Geometric Topology 2026-05-01 v1 Algebraic Topology

Abstract

It is not known whether the realisation part of the ss-cobordism theorem holds for smooth 4-manifolds, nor whether every pair of smoothly hh-cobordant 4-manifolds is also smoothly ss-cobordant. We provide some new conditions under which these questions admit a positive answer. We also give conditions under which the `standard' method to construct an hh-cobordism with specified torsion cannot work.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.27635,
  title  = {Some remarks on $h$-cobordisms between smooth 4-manifolds},
  author = {Alexander Kupers and Mark Powell},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.27635},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages, 1 figure