Related papers: For Exotic Surfaces with Boundary, One Stabilizati…

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…

Internal stabilization adds a trivial handle to an embedded surface in a coordinate chart. It is known that any pair of smoothly knotted surfaces in a simply-connected $4$-manifold become smoothly isotopic after sufficiently many internal…

In this brief note, we show that there exist smooth 4-manifolds (with nonempty boundary) containing pairs of exotically knotted 2-spheres that remain exotic after one (either external or internal) stabilization. It follows that the ``one is…

We show that many explicit examples of exotic pairs of surfaces in a smooth 4-manifold become smoothly isotopic after one external stabilization with $S^2\times S^2$ or $CP^2\#\overline{CP^2}$. Our results cover surfaces produced by…

Define the 1-handle stabilization distance between two surfaces properly embedded in a fixed 4-dimensional manifold to be the minimal number of 1-handle stabilizations necessary for the surfaces to become ambiently isotopic. For every…

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…

Wall-type stabilization problems investigate the collapse of exotic 4-dimensional phenomena under stabilization operations (e.g., taking connected sums with $S^2 \times S^2$). We propose an elementary approach to these problems, providing a…

We construct an example of a cork that remains exotic after taking a connected sum with $S^2 \times S^2$. Combined with a work of Akbulut-Ruberman, this implies the existence of an exotic pair of contractible 4-manifolds which remains…

We answer a question of Livingston from 1982 by producing Seifert surfaces of the same genus for a knot in $S^3$ that do not become isotopic when their interiors are pushed into $B^4$. In particular, we identify examples where the surfaces…

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 address a special case of the Stabilization Problem for Heegaard splittings, establishing an upper bound on the number of stabilizations required to make a Heegaard splitting of a Haken 3-manifold isotopic to an amalgamation along an…

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 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 show that any two same-genus, oriented, boundary parallel surfaces bounded by a non-split, alternating link into the 4-ball are smoothly isotopic fixing boundary. In other words, any same-genus Seifert surfaces for a non-split,…

Let $T$ be a separating incompressible torus in a 3-manifold $M$. Assuming that a genus $g$ Heegaard splitting $V \cup_S W$ can be positioned nicely with respect to $T$ (e.g. $V \cup_S W$ is strongly irreducible), we obtain an upper bound…

If $\Sigma$ and $\Sigma'$ are homotopic embedded surfaces in a $4$-manifold then they may be related by a regular homotopy (at the expense of introducing double points) or by a sequence of stabilisations and destabilisations (at the expense…

Gompf's end-sum techniques are used to establish the existence of an infinity of non-diffeomorphic manifolds, all having the same trivial ${\bf R^4}$ topology, but for which the exotic differentiable structure is confined to a region which…

We investigate the realisability of the Casson-Sullivan invariant for homeomorphisms of smooth $4$-manifolds, which is the obstruction to a homeomorphism being stably pseudo-isotopic to a diffeomorphism, valued in the third cohomology of…

In a small simply-connected closed 4-manifold, we construct infinitely many pairs of exotic codimension-$1$ submanifolds with diffeomorphic complements that remain exotic after any number of stabilizations by $ S^2 \times S^2$. We also give…

This paper studies properly embedded surfaces in the 4-ball that are exotically knotted (i.e., topologically but not smoothly isotopic), and leverages this local phenomenon to study surfaces in larger 4-manifolds. The main results provide a…