English

Stable isotopy in four dimensions

Geometric Topology 2015-06-12 v2 Differential Geometry

Abstract

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 S2×S2S^2 \times S^2, and as a consequence, analogous families of diffeomorphisms and metrics of positive scalar curvature for such 4-manifolds. We also construct families of smoothly distinct links, all of whose corresponding proper sublinks are smoothly isotopic, that become smoothly isotopic after stabilizing.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1406.4937,
  title  = {Stable isotopy in four dimensions},
  author = {Dave Auckly and Hee Jung Kim and Paul Melvin and Daniel Ruberman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.4937},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

24 pages; many color figures; Updated version: 25 pages; minor expository changes; to appear in Journal London Mathematical Society

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:42:02.579Z