Related papers: Exotic group actions on simply connected smooth 4-…

A myriad of irreducible symplectic 4-manifolds with abelian non-cyclic fundamental group is constructed. The botany of manifolds with finite non-cyclic fundamental groups is also studied.

Let $M$ be a closed, connected, orientable topological four-manifold with $H_1(M)$ nontrivial and free abelian, $b_2(M)\ne 0, 2$, and $\chi(M)\ne 0$. We show that if $G$ is a finite group of 2-rank $\le 1$ which admits a homologically…

Given a 4-manifold with a homologically trivial and locally-linear cyclic group action, we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of equivariant bundles. The conditions are derived from the twisted signature formula…

Let $X$ be a compact, oriented, smooth, simply-connected $4$-manifold. The mapping class group of $X$ is defined as the group of smooth isotopy classes of diffeomorphisms of $X$. The Torelli group of $X$ is the subgroup of the mapping class…

We give several criteria on a closed, oriented 3-manifold that will imply that it is the boundary of a (simply connected) 4-manifold that admits infinitely many distinct smooth structures. We also show that any weakly fillable contact…

We construct a new family {K_n} of simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds with the property c_1^2(K_n)/chi(K_n) -> 9 (as n goes to infinity).

For each odd integer $p > 1$, we construct infinitely many pairwise non-diffeomorphic irreducible smooth structures on a definite 4-manifold with infinite fundamental group whose abelianization is $\Z/2p\Z\times \Z/2\Z$.

We study the set $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ of framed smoothly slice links which lie on the boundary of the complement of a 1-handlebody in a closed, simply connected, smooth 4-manifold $M$. We show that $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ is…

Examples of nonformal simply connected symplectic manifolds are constructed.

We show how to construct absolutely exotic smooth structures on compact 4-manifolds with boundary, including contractible manifolds. In particular, we prove that any compact smooth 4-manifold W with boundary that admits a relatively exotic…

We prove that a variety of examples of minimal complex surfaces admit exotic diffeomorphisms, providing the first known instances of exotic diffeomorphisms of irreducible 4-manifolds. We also give sufficient conditions for the boundary Dehn…

We give two constructions of surfaces in simply-connected 4-manifolds with non simply-connected complements. One is an iteration of the twisted rim surgery introduced by the first author. We also construct, for any group G satisfying some…

We construct exotic copies of $\mathbb{R}^4$ with nontrivial compactly supported mapping class groups of arbitrarily large rank. This follows from a modification of the construction of the diffeomorphism corks of arXiv:2407.04696 that makes…

A short survey of exotic smooth structutes on 4-manifolds is given with a special emphasis on the corresponding cork structures. Along the way we discuss some of the more recent results in this direction, obtained jointly with R.Matveyev,…

In a recent paper, Park constructs certain exotic simply-connected four-manifolds with small Euler characteristics. Our aim here is to prove that the four-manifolds in his constructions are minimal.

The possibilities for new or unusual kinds of topological, locally linear periodic maps of non-prime order on closed, simply connected 4-manifolds with positive definite intersection pairings are explored. On the one hand, certain…

The main results of this paper describes a formula for the Seiberg-Witten invariant of a 4-manifold which admits a nontrivial free S^1-action. We use this theorem to produce a nonsymplectic 4-manifold with a free circle action whose orbit…

For a simply-connected closed manifold $X$ of $\dim X \neq 4$, the mapping class group $\pi_0(\mathrm{Diff}(X))$ is known to be finitely generated. We prove that analogous finite generation fails in dimension 4. Namely, we show that there…

We show that, under a certain condition, contact 5-manifolds can `coarsely' distinguish smooth structures on compact Stein 4-manifolds via contact open books. We also give a simple sufficient condition for an infinite family of Stein…

We study the topology of compact manifolds with a Lie group action for which there are only finitely many non-principal orbits, and describe the possible orbit spaces which can occur. If some non-principal orbit is singular, we show that…