Absolutely exotic compact 4-manifolds

  • Selman Akbulut

    Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA
  • Daniel Ruberman

    Brandeis University, Waltham, USA

Abstract

We show how to construct absolutely exotic smooth structures on compact 4-manifolds with boundary, including contractible manifolds. In particular, we prove that any compact smooth 4-manifold W with boundary that admits a relatively exotic structure contains a pair of codimension-zero submanifolds homotopy equivalent to W that are absolutely exotic copies of each other. In this context, absolute means that the exotic structure is not relative to a particular parameterization of the boundary. Our examples are constructed by modifying a relatively exotic manifold by adding an invertible homology cobordism along its boundary. Applying this technique to corks (contractible manifolds with a diffeomorphism of the boundary that does not extend to a diffeomorphism of the interior) gives examples of absolutely exotic smooth structures on contractible 4-manifolds.

Cite this article

Selman Akbulut, Daniel Ruberman, Absolutely exotic compact 4-manifolds. Comment. Math. Helv. 91 (2016), no. 1, pp. 1–19

DOI 10.4171/CMH/375