Related papers: Trace Embeddings from Zero Surgery Homeomorphisms
One strategy for distinguishing smooth structures on closed $4$-manifolds is to produce a knot $K$ in $S^3$ that is slice in one smooth filling $W$ of $S^3$ but not slice in some homeomorphic smooth filling $W'$. In this paper we explore…
We generalize the RBG construction of Manolescu and Piccirillo to produce pairs of knots with the same $n$-surgery, and investigate the possibility of constructing exotic definite four-manifolds using $n$-surgery homeomorphisms.
We define an operation on homology ${B}^4$ which we call an $n$-twist annulus modification. We give a new construction of smoothly slice knots and exotically slice knots via $n$-twist annulus modifications. As an application, we present a…
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 produce infinitely many distinct irreducible smooth 4-manifolds homeomorphic to #(2m+1)(CP^2 # -CP^2) and #(2n+1)(S^2 x S^2), respectively, for each m>3 and n>4. These provide the smallest exotic closed simply connected 4-manifolds with…
We initiate the study of torus surgeries on knot traces. Our key technical insight is realizing the annulus twisting construction of Osoinach as a torus surgery on a knot trace. We present several applications of this idea. We find exotic…
For 5 <= k <= 8 we show that the infinite family of exotic smooth structures on CP^2# k(-CP^2) can be achieved by 1/n - surgeries on a single embedded nullhomologous torus in a manifold R_k which is homeomorphic to CP^2# k(-CP^2).
While topologists have had possession of possible counterexamples to the smooth 4-dimensional Poincar\'{e} conjecture (SPC4) for over 30 years, until recently no invariant has existed which could potentially distinguish these examples from…
We use surgery along 2-tori embedded in a union of two copies of a product of punctured 2-tori to produce a new collection of homotopy 4-spheres (4-manifolds homotopy equivalent to $S^4$ and hence homeomorphic to $S^4$ but possibly not…
One approach to produce a pair of homeomorphic-but-not-diffeomophic closed 4-manifolds is to find a knot which is smoothly slice in one but not the other. This approach has never been run successfully. We give the first examples of a pair…
We extend the infinite family of exotic embeddings $\mathbb{RP}^2 \hookrightarrow S^4$ constructed by Miyazawa to a strictly larger family of exotic embeddings, by showing that in place of the pretzel knot $P(-2, 3, 7)$, an infinite family…
Fintushel-Stern's knot surgery gave many pairs of exotic manifolds, which are homeomorphic but non-diffeomorphic. We show that if an elliptic fibration has two parallel, oppositely oriented vanishing circles (for example $S^2\times S^2$ or…
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…
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…
Let $M$ be $\CP#2\CPb$, $3\CP#4\CPb$ or $(2n-1)\CP#2n\CPb$ for any integer $n\geq 3$. We construct an irreducible symplectic 4-manifold homeomorphic to $M$ and also an infinite family of pairwise non-diffeomorphic irreducible non-symplectic…
Attaching a Casson handle to a slice disk complement yields a smooth 4-manifold that is homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^4$. We show that if two slice knots have sufficiently different knot Floer homology, then the resulting exotic…
In $1961$, Mazur constructed a contractible, compact, smooth $4$-manifold with boundary which is not homeomorphic to the standard $4$-ball, using a $0$-handle, a $1$-handle and a $2$-handle. In this paper, for any integer $n\geq2,$ we…
In this article, we construct infinitley many simply connected, nonsymplectic and pairwise nondiffeomorphic 4-manifolds starting from E(n) and applying the sequence of knot surgery, ordinary blowups and rational blowdown. We also compute…
Four observations compose the main results of this note. The first records the existence of a smoothly embedded 2-sphere $S$ inside $\mathbb{R} P^2\times S^2$ such that performing a Gluck twist on $S$ produces a manifold $Y$ that is…
It is known that there is a unique concordance class in the free homotopy class of $S^1\times pt \subset S^1 \times S^2$. The constructive proof of this fact is given by the second author. It turns out that all the concordances in this…