Related papers: Topologically isotopic and smoothly inequivalent 2…
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 point out that recent constructions of inequivalent smooth structures yield a manufacturing procedure of infinite sets of pairwise smoothly non-isotopic nullhomologous 2-tori and spheres inside a myriad of 4-manifolds. The corresponding…
Here we discuss an example of topologically isotopic but smoothly non-isotopic pair of 2-spheres in a simply connected 4-manifold, which become smoothly isotopic after stabilizing by connected summing with S^2 x S^2.
We construct infinitely many smooth oriented 4-manifolds containing pairs of homotopic, smoothly embedded 2-spheres that are not topologically isotopic, but that are equivalent by an ambient diffeomorphism inducing the identity on homology.…
Any two homologous surfaces of the same genus embedded in a smooth 4-manifold X with simply-connected complements are shown to be smoothly isotopic in the connected sum of X and the product of a 2-sphere with itself, if the surfaces are…
We construct infinite families of topologically isotopic but smoothly distinct knotted spheres in many simply connected 4-manifolds that become smoothly isotopic after stabilizing by connected summing with $S^2 \times S^2$, and as a…
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…
Some generalizations and variations of the Fintushel-Stern rim surgery are known to produce smoothly knotted surfaces. We show that if the fundamental groups of their complements are cyclic, then these surfaces are topologically unknotted.…
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…
In this note we study whether specific elements in the second homology of specific simply connected closed $4$-manifolds can be represented by smooth or topologically flat embedded spheres.
We construct infinitely many pairwise non-diffeomorphic smooth structures on a definite $4$-manifold with non-cyclic fundamental group $\mathbb{Z}/2\times \mathbb{Z}/2$.
Under certain homological hypotheses on a compact 4-manifold, we prove exactness of the topological surgery sequence at the stably smoothable normal invariants. The main examples are the class of finite connected sums of 4-manifolds with…
Examples are given to show that some compact contractible 4-manifolds can be knotted in the 4-sphere. It is then proved that any finitely presented perfect group with a balanced presentation is a knot group for an embedding of some…
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…
Given a 2-manifold, a fundamental question to ask is which groups can be realized as the isometry group of a Riemannan metric of constant curvature on the manifold. In this paper, we give a nearly complete classification of such groups for…
We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the mapping class group of the pair of the 3-sphere and a graph embedded in it to be isomorphic to the topological symmetry group of the embedded graph.
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…
The trace of $n$-framed surgery on a knot in $S^3$ is a 4-manifold homotopy equivalent to the 2-sphere. We characterise when a generator of the second homotopy group of such a manifold can be realised by a locally flat embedded 2-sphere…
In this paper, we study stable equivalence of exotically knotted surfaces in 4-manifolds, surfaces that are topologically isotopic but not smoothly isotopic. We prove that any pair of embedded surfaces in the same homology class become…
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,…