Related papers: A fake smooth CP^2 # RP^4

We show P\'eter Csorba's conjecture that the graph homomorphism complex Hom(C_5,K_{n+2}) is homeomorphic to a Stiefel manifold, the space of unit tangent vectors to the n-dimensional sphere. For this a general tool is developed that allows…

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 show that there exists a link with 2 components which is not smoothly slice in $\mathbb{CP}^2 \# \overline{\mathbb{CP}^2}$. By contrast, it is well-known that every knot (i.e., link with 1 component) is smoothly slice therein. Our proof…

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…

We consider four-dimensional homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian manifolds with non-trivial isotropy and completely classify the cases giving rise to non-trivial homogeneous Ricci solitons. In particular, we show the existence of non-compact…

Here we study two interesting smooth contractible manifolds, whose boundaries have non-trivial mapping class groups. The first one is a non-Stein contractible manifold, such that every self diffeomorphism of its boundary extends inside;…

We construct a compact PL 5-manifold $M$ (with boundary) which is homotopy equivalent to the wedge of eleven 2-spheres, $\vee^{}_{1 1}S^2$, which is "spineless", meaning $M$ is not the regular neighborhood of any 2-complex PL embedded in…

Given a symplectic 4-manifold $(X,\omega)$ with rational symplectic form, Auroux constructed branched coverings to $(CP^2,\omega_{FS})$. By modifying a previous construction of Lambert-Cole--Meier--Starkston, we prove that the branch locus…

We establish a braid of interlocking exact sequences containing the group of homotopy self-equivalences of a smooth or topological 4-manifold. The braid is computed for manifolds whose fundamental group is finite of odd order.

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…

Let $M$ be a compact $4$-manifold and let $S$ and $T$ be embedded $2$-spheres in $M$, both with trivial normal bundle. We write $M_S$ and $M_T$ for the $4$-manifolds obtained by the Gluck twist operation on $M$ along $S$ and $T$…

We show that any simply connected topological closed $4$-manifold punctured along any compact, totally disconnected tame subset $\Lambda$ admits a continuum of smoothings which are not diffeomorphic to any leaf of a $C^{1,0}$ codimension…

Perron and Quinn gave independent proofs in 1986 that every topological pseudo-isotopy of a simply-connected, compact topological 4-manifold is isotopic to the identity. Another result of Quinn is that every smooth pseudo-isotopy of a…

We consider mapping class groups \Gamma(M) = pi_0 Diff(M fix \partial M) of smooth compact simply connected oriented 4-manifolds M bounded by a collection of 3-spheres. We show that if M contains CP^2 (with either orientation) as a…

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…

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).

Let M:=(M^{4},\om) be a 4-dimensional rational ruled symplectic manifold and denote by w_{M} its Gromov width. Let Emb_{\omega}(B^{4}(c),M) be the space of symplectic embeddings of the standard ball B^4(c) \subset \R^4 of radius r and of…

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 collection of constructions which illustrate a panoply of ``exotic'' smooth 4-manifolds.

We prove that there exist infinitely many embedded tori with a common geometric dual in $T^4\#(S^2\times S^2)$ that are homotopic, diffeomorphic, but not isotopic to each other, even after arbitrary many external stabilizations. These…