Related papers: Corks, exotic 4-manifolds and genus functions

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 set $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ of framed smoothly slice links which lie on the boundary of the complement of a 1-handlebody in a closed, simply connected, smooth 4-manifold $M$. We show that $\widehat{\mathcal S}_M$ is…

Every exotic pair in 4-dimension is obtained each other by twisting a {\it cork} or {\it plug} which are codimension 0 submanifolds embedded in the 4-manifolds. The twist was an involution on the boundary of the submanifold. We define cork…

We introduce multisections of smooth, closed 4-manifolds, which generalize trisections to decompositions with more than three pieces. This decomposition describes an arbitrary smooth, closed 4-manifold as a sequence of cut systems on a…

We produce examples of pairwise non-diffeomorphic closed irreducible 4-manifolds with non-trivial free abelian fundamental group of rank less than three and small Euler characteristic. These exotic smooth structures become standard after…

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…

This paper is the second part of our work on 4-dimensional 2-handlebodies. In the first part (arXiv:math.GT/0407032) it is shown that up to certain set of local moves, connected simple coverings of B^4 branched over ribbon surfaces,…

A short survey of exotic smooth structutes on 4-manifolds is given with a special emphasis on the corresponding cork structures. Along the way we discuss some of the more recent results in this direction, obtained jointly with R.Matveyev,…

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.…

For suitable finite groups G, we construct contractible 4-manifolds C with an effective G-action on $\partial C$ whose associated pairs (C,g) for all $g \in G$ are distinct smoothings of the pair $(C,\partial C)$. Indeed C embeds in a…

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 the smooth $4$-manifold $M$ obtained by attaching a $2$-handle to $B^4$ along a certain knot $K\subset \partial B^4$ admits infinitely many absolutely exotic copies $M_n$, $n=0,1,2..$, such that each copy $M_n$ is obtained by…

We offer a new proof that two closed oriented 4-manifolds are cobordant if their signatures agree, in the spirit of Lickorish's proof that all closed oriented 3-manifolds bound 4-manifolds. Where Lickorish uses Heegaard splittings we use…

Any smooth, closed oriented 4-manifold has a surface diagram of arbitrarily high genus g>2 that specifies it up to diffeomorphism. The goal of this paper is to prove the following statement: For any smooth, closed oriented 4-manifold M,…

The aim of this paper is to produce infinite exotic structures on smooth closed oriented $4-$manifolds with fundamental group isomorphic to the infinite dihedral group, assuming that $b_2^+$ and $b_2^-$ are at least $12$.

We define family versions of the invariant of 4-manifolds with contact boundary due to Kronheimer and Mrowka and use these to detect exotic diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds with boundary. Further, we show the existence of the first example of…

In this article, we construct countably many mutually non-isotopic diffeomorphisms of some closed non simply-connected 4-manifolds that are homotopic to but not isotopic to the identity, by surgery along $\Theta$-graphs. As corollaries of…

We produce infinite families of exotic actions of finite cyclic groups on simply connected smooth 4-manifolds with nontrivial Seiberg-Witten invariants.

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…

Given a closed four-manifold $X$ with an indefinite intersection form, we consider smoothly embedded surfaces in $X \setminus $int$(B^4)$, with boundary a knot $K \subset S^3$. We give several methods to bound the genus of such surfaces in…