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arXiv · 2505.00646

The Whitehead group and stably trivial $G$-smoothings

Oliver H. Wang
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Abstract

A closed manifold $M$ of dimension at least $5$ has only finitely many smooth structures. Moreover, smooth structures of $M$ are in bijection with smooth structures of $M\times\mathbb{R}$. Both of these statements are false equivariantly. In this paper, we use controlled $h$-cobordisms to construct infinitely many $G$-smoothings of a $G$-manifold $X$. Moreover, these $G$-smoothings are isotopic after taking a product with $\mathbb{R}$.

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Oliver H. Wang. 2025-05-01. The Whitehead group and stably trivial $G$-smoothings. https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.00646

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