Related papers: An obstruction to smooth isotopy in dimension 4

We show examples of pairs of smooth, compact, homeomorphic 4-manifolds, whose diffeomorphism types are distinguished by the topology of the singular sets of smooth stable maps defined on them. In this distinction we rely on results from…

We show that there exists an algorithm that takes as input two closed, simply connected, topological 4-manifolds and decides whether or not these 4-manifolds are homeomorphic. In particular, we explain in detail how closed, simply…

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.…

We prove that semisimple 4-dimensional oriented topological field theories lead to stable diffeomorphism invariants and can therefore not distinguish homeomorphic closed oriented smooth 4-manifolds and homotopy equivalent simply connected…

David Gabai recently proved a smooth 4-dimensional "Light Bulb Theorem" in the absence of 2-torsion in the fundamental group. We extend his result to 4-manifolds with arbitrary fundamental group by showing that an invariant of Mike Freedman…

We give an infinite family of embeddings of $\mathbb{R} P^2$ to $S^4$ such that they are mutually topologically isotopic however are not smoothly isotopic to each other. Moreover, they are topologically isotopic to the standard $P^2$-knot.…

Despite spectacular advances in defining invariants for simply connected smooth and symplectic 4-dimensional manifolds and the discovery of effective surgical techniques, we still have been unable to classify simply connected smooth…

We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a closed smooth 6-manifold N to be diffeomorphic to a product of a surface F and a simply connected 4-manifold M in terms of basic invariants like the fundamental group and cohomological data.…

We use lens-shaped models and the second obstruction to pseudoisotopy to construct a nontrivial diffeomorphism of $M\times I$ where $M$ is the connected sum of $S^1\times S^2$ with a another nonsimply connected 3-manifold $M'$. Then we take…

A pseudoisotopy of $M$ is a diffeomorphism of $M\times I$ which is the identity on $M\times 0$. We give an explicit construction of pseudoisotopies of 4-manifolds which realize certain elements of the "second obstruction to pseudoisotopy".…

The above named paper has been withdrawn. A colleague has observed a gap in the proof of isotopy invariance, which can be repaired by reducing the coefficients (which lie in (1/6)Z) of the antisymmetric kanji with chords incident with more…

We introduce an invariant of tuples of commutative diffeomorphisms on a 4-manifold using families of Seiberg-Witten equations. This is a generalization of Ruberman's invariant of diffeomorphisms defined using 1-parameter families of…

The following questions are germane to our understanding of gauge-(in)variant quantities and physical possibility: how are gauge transformations and spacetime diffeomorphisms understood as symmetries, in which ways are they similar, and in…

Let $M$ be a smooth, orientable, closed, connected $4$-manifold and suppose that $H_1(M;\mathbb{Z})$ is finitely generated and has no $2$-torsion. We give a homotopy decomposition of the suspension of $M$ in terms of spheres, Moore spaces…

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…

We define a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-valued invariant for transversely-intersecting coassociative $4$-folds equipped with spin structures. Our main result shows this invariant provides an obstruction to separating two such coassociatives through a…

We give constraints on smooth families of 4-manifolds with boundary using Manolescu's Seiberg-Witten Floer stable homotopy type, provided that the fiberwise restrictions of the families to the boundaries are trivial families of 3-manifolds.…

An isovariant map is an equivariant map between $G$-spaces which strictly preserves isotropy groups. We consider an isovariant analogue of Klein--Williams equivariant intersection theory for a finite group $G$. We prove that under certain…

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 introduce a diffeomorphism invariant of $4$-manifolds, the $\mathrm{Pin}^-(2)$-monopole invariant, defined by using the $\mathrm{Pin}^-(2)$-monopole equations. We compute the invariants of several $4$-manifolds, and prove gluing…