Related papers: Exotic smooth structures on 4-manifolds with zero …

We introduce a general procedure called `reverse engineering' that can be used to construct infinite families of smooth 4-manifolds in a given homeomorphism type. As one of the applications of this technique, we produce an infinite family…

We prove that there exist infinitely many contractible compact smooth $4$-manifolds $C$ that admit absolutely exotic diffeomorphisms of infinite order in $\pi_0(\mathrm{Diff}(C))$. By ``absolutely", we mean that isotopies are not required…

We study the possibility of realizing exotic smooth structures on punctured simply connected $4$-manifolds as leaves of a codimension one foliation on a compact manifold. In particular, we show the existence of uncountably many smooth open…

We provide an infinite family of diffeomorphic symplectic forms on ruled surfaces, which are pairwise non-isotopic. This answers a uniqueness question regarding symplectic structures up to isotopy on closed symplectic four-manifolds.

We show that minimal symplectic 4--manifolds with $b_2^+ >1$ and with residually finite fundamental groups are irreducible. We also give examples of irreducible orientable four--manifolds with indefinite intersection forms which are not…

In this paper, we investigate existence of inequivalent smooth structures on closed smooth non-orientable 4-manifolds building upon results of Akbulut, Cappell-Shaneson, Fintushel-Stern, Gompf, and Stolz. We add to the number of known…

We show that the smooth $4$-manifold $M$ obtained by attaching a $2$-handle to $B^4$ along a certain knot $K\subset \partial B^4$ admits infinitely many absolutely exotic copies $M_n$, $n=0,1,2..$, such that each copy $M_n$ is obtained by…

In this paper we exhibit infinite families of embedded tori in 4-manifolds that are topologically isotopic but smoothly distinct. The interesting thing about these tori is that they are topologically trivial in the sense that each bounds a…

We show that for any finitely presented group $G$, there is a simply connected closed 4-manifold containing an infinite family of topologically isotopic but smoothly inequivalent 2-links whose 2-link group is $G$. We also show that, if $G$…

We describe a construction procedure of infinite sets of $2$-links in closed simply connected 4-manifolds that are topologically isotopic, smoothly inequivalent and componentwise topologically unknotted. These 2-links are the first examples…

Kreck and Schafer produced the first examples of stably diffeomorphic closed smooth 4-manifolds which are not homotopy equivalent. They were constructed by applying the doubling construction to 2-complexes over certain finite abelian groups…

We provide information on diffeotopy groups of exotic smoothings of punctured 4-manifolds, extending previous results on diffeotopy groups of exotic $\mathbb{R}^4$'s. In particular, we prove that for a smoothable 4-manifold $M$ and for a…

We study locally flat, compact, oriented surfaces in $4$-manifolds whose exteriors have infinite cyclic fundamental group. We give algebraic topological criteria for two such surfaces, with the same genus $g$, to be related by an ambient…

We construct closed, aspherical, smooth 4-manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic. These provide counterexamples to a smooth analog of the Borel conjecture in dimension four. Our technique is to apply the `reflection group…

In this article, we present new symplectic 4-manifolds with same integral cohomology as $S^{2}\times S^{2}$. The generalization of this construction is given as well, an infinite family of symplectic 4-manifolds cohomology equivalent to…

In this article, we construct the first example of a simply connected minimal symplectic 4-manifold homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to 3CP^2#7CP^2b. We also construct the first exotic symplectic structure on CP^2#5CP^2b.

This article presents the constructions of new infinite families of smooth 4-manifolds with the property that any two manifolds in the same family are homeomorphic and, from their construction, seem to be quite different, but cannot be…

We construct a number of topologically trivial but smoothly non-trivial families of embeddings of 3-manifolds in 4-manifolds. These include embeddings of homology spheres in $S^4$ that are not isotopic but have diffeomorphic complements,…

We introduce a variant of contact homology for convex open contact manifolds. As an application, we prove the existence of (in fact, infinitely many) exotic tight contact structures on $\mathbb{R}^{2n-1}$ for all $n>2$.

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…