Related papers: Irreducible 4-manifolds can admit exotic diffeomor…

We show that there exists an exotic pair of $4$-manifolds with boundary whose trisection genera are $4$. We also construct genus-$3$ relative trisections for an infinite family of contractible $4$-manifolds introduced by Akbulut and Kirby.

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…

Ruberman gave the first examples of self-diffeomorphisms of four-manifolds that are isotopic to the identity in the topological category but not smoothly so. We give another example of this phenomenon, using the Dehn twist along a 3-sphere…

We exhibit the first examples of exotic contactomorphisms with infinite order as elements of the contact mapping class group. These are given by certain Dehn twists on the separating sphere in a connected sum of two closed contact…

While the exotic diffeomorphisms turned out to be very rich, we know much less about the $b^+_2 =2$ case, as parameterized gauge-theoretic invariants are not well defined. In this paper we present a method (that is, comparing the winding…

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 that any finitely presented group with an index two subgroup is realized as the fundamental group of a closed smooth non-orientable four-manifold that admits an exotic smooth structure, which is obtained by performing a Gluck twist.…

We study the monodromy diffeomorphism of Milnor fibrations of isolated complex surface singularities, by computing the family Seiberg--Witten invariant of Seifert-fibered Dehn twists using recent advances in monopole Floer homology. More…

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.

Inspired by a recent result of Levine-Lidman-Piccirillo, we construct infinitely many exotic smooth structures on some closed four-manifolds with definite intersection form and fundamental group isomorphic to $\Z /2\Z$. Similar…

We prove that all minimal symplectic four-manifolds are essentially irreducible. We also clarify the relationship between holomorphic and symplectic minimality of K\"ahler surfaces. This leads to a new proof of the deformation-invariance of…

A myriad of irreducible symplectic 4-manifolds with abelian non-cyclic fundamental group is constructed. The botany of manifolds with finite non-cyclic fundamental groups is also studied.

We introduce a new generalization of Gompf nuclei and give applications. We construct infinitely many exotic smooth structures for a large class of compact 4-manifolds with boundary, regarding topological invariants. We prove that a large…

Recent discoveries in differential topology are reviewed in light of their possible implications for spacetime models and related subjects in theoretical physics. Although not often noted, a particular smoothness (differentiability)…

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.…

A surface automorphism is strongly irreducible if every essential simple closed curve in the surface has nontrivial geometric intersection with its image. We show that a three-manifold admits only finitely many inequivalent surface bundle…

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…

For each nonnegative integer m we show that any closed, oriented topological four-manifold with fundamental group Z_{4m+2} and odd intersection form, with possibly seven exceptions, either admits no smooth structure or admits infinitely…

We study exotic smoothings of open 4-manifolds using the minimal genus function and its analog for end homology. While traditional techniques in open 4-manifold smoothing theory give no control of minimal genera, we make progress by using…

Consider cotangent bundles of exotic spheres, with their canonical symplectic structure. They admit automorphisms which preserve the part at infinity of one fibre, and which are analogous to the square of a Dehn twist. Pursuing that…