Related papers: Family Bauer--Furuta invariant, Exotic Surfaces an…
We show examples of pairs of smooth, compact, homeomorphic 4-manifolds, whose diffeomorphism types are distinguished by the topology of the singular sets of smooth stable maps defined on them. In this distinction we rely on results from…
We proved that the boundary Dehn twist on the Milnor fiber $M_c(2, q, r)$ is an exotic diffeomorphism relative to the boundary if $q, r$ are odd, coprime integers bigger than $3$ and $(q-1)(r-1)/4$ is an odd number. The proof is given by…
When two smooth manifold bundles over the same base are fiberwise tangentially homeomorphic, the difference is measured by a homology class in the total space of the bundle. We call this the relative smooth structure class. Rationally and…
We study the relationship between exotic R^4's and Stein surfaces as it applies to smoothing theory on more general open 4-manifolds. In particular, we construct the first known examples of large exotic R^4's that embed in Stein surfaces.…
We generalise the Kreck-Stolz invariants s_2 and s_3 by defining a new invariant, the t-invariant, for quaternionic line bundles E over closed spin-manifolds M of dimension 4k-1 with H^3(M; \Q) = 0 such that c_2(E)\in H^4(M) is torsion. The…
This paper studies the rational homotopy groups of the group $\mathrm{Diff}(S^4)$ of self-diffeomorphisms of $S^4$ with the $C^\infty$-topology. We present a method to prove that there are many `exotic' non-trivial elements in…
A fundamental result in 4-manifold topology asserts that any two exotic smooth structures on a simply-connected, closed 4-manifold differ by a cork twist: the operation of removing a compact, contractible, codimension-zero submanifold and…
We prove a localization theorem for exotic diffeomorphisms, showing that every diffeomorphism of a compact simply-connected 4-manifold that is isotopic to the identity after stabilizing with one copy of $S^2 \times S^2$, is smoothly…
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…
Using Furuta's idea of finite dimensional approximation in Seiberg-Witten theory, we refine Seiberg-Witten Floer homology to obtain an invariant of homology 3-spheres which lives in the S^1-equivariant graded suspension category. In…
We establish constraints on the topology of smooth Lefschetz fibrations with $4$-dimensional fibers, by studying the family Bauer-Furuta invariant. To compute this invariant, we analyze the framed bordism class of 1-dimensional…
We prove that semisimple 4-dimensional oriented topological field theories lead to stable diffeomorphism invariants and can therefore not distinguish homeomorphic closed oriented smooth 4-manifolds and homotopy equivalent simply connected…
Extending the work of the first author, we introduce a notion of semisimple topological field theory in arbitrary even dimension and show that such field theories necessarily lead to stable diffeomorphism invariants. The main result of this…
We use new homotopy-theoretic tools to prove the existence of smooth $U(1)$- and $Sp(1)$-actions on infinite families of exotic spheres. Such families of spheres are propagated by the complex and quaternionic analogues of the Mahowald…
We show the "non-existence" results are essential for all the previous known applications of the Bauer-Furuta stable homotopy Seiberg-Witten invariants. As an example, we present a unified proof of the adjunction inequalities. We also show…
We develop a $\mathrm{Pin}(2) \times \mathbb{Z}_2$-equivariant refinement of the lattice homotopy type for computing equivariant Seiberg--Witten Floer homotopy types. As an application, we construct a relatively exotic diffeomorphism on a…
Kronheimer-Mrowka recently proved that the Dehn twist along a 3-sphere in the neck of $K3\#K3$ is not smoothly isotopic to the identity. This provides a new example of self-diffeomorphisms on 4-manifolds that are isotopic to the identity in…
We introduce new methods in pseudo-isotopy and embedding space theory. As an application we introduce an invariant that detects nontrivial loops of embedded 2-spheres in $S^{2} \times S^{2}$ and in connected sums of $S^{2} \times S^{2}$.…
We construct an invariant of open four-manifolds using the Heegaard Floer theory of Ozsvath and Szabo. We show that there is a manifold X homeomorphic to R^4 for which the invariant is non-trivial, showing that X is an exotic R^4.
We give constraints on smooth families of 4-manifolds with boundary using Manolescu's Seiberg-Witten Floer stable homotopy type, provided that the fiberwise restrictions of the families to the boundaries are trivial families of 3-manifolds.…