Gauge theory for families
This article surveys gauge theory for families and its applications to the comparison between the diffeomorphism group and the homeomorphism group of $4$-manifolds, up to 2021.
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arXiv subjects
Hokuto Konno
Publications and source records attributed to Hokuto Konno.
Diffeomorphism groups and gauge theory for families
This article provides a survey of gauge theory for families, with a particular focus on its applications to diffeomorphism groups of $4$-manifolds that were developed during the period 2021--2025.
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Constraints on Lefschetz fibrations with four-dimensional fibers from Seiberg-Witten theory
We establish constraints on the topology of smooth Lefschetz fibrations with $4$-dimensional fibers, by studying the family Bauer-Furuta invariant. To compute this invariant, we analyze the framed bordism class of 1-dimensional Seiberg-Witten moduli spaces using the local index theorem by Bismut-Freed. Using this, we deduce new obstructions to the smooth isotopy to the identity for compositions of Dehn twists on $(-2)$-spheres in closed $4$-manifolds. We obtain several applications: (1) We exhibit the first examples of closed simply-connected symplectic $4$-manifolds admitting Torelli symplectomorphisms which are smoothly non-trivial. In particular, their symplectic Torelli mapping class group is not generated by squared Dehn-Seidel twists on Lagrangian spheres -- providing a negative answer to a question of Donaldson. (2) We provide the first examples of irreducible closed $4$-manifolds (both symplectic and non-symplectic) that admit exotic diffeomorphisms given by Seifert-fibered Dehn twist.
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On absolutely exotic diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds
We prove that there exist infinitely many contractible compact smooth $4$-manifolds $C$ that admit absolutely exotic diffeomorphisms of infinite order in $π_0(\mathrm{Diff}(C))$. By ``absolutely", we mean that isotopies are not required to be relative to the boundary. This follows from a theorem that produces absolutely exotic diffeomorphisms from relatively exotic diffeomorphisms, analogous to a theorem of Akbulut and Ruberman that produces absolutely exotic 4-manifolds from relatively exotic 4-manifolds.
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Irreducible 4-manifolds can admit exotic diffeomorphisms
We prove that a variety of examples of minimal complex surfaces admit exotic diffeomorphisms, providing the first known instances of exotic diffeomorphisms of irreducible 4-manifolds. We also give sufficient conditions for the boundary Dehn twist on a spin 4-manifold with $S^3$ boundary to be non-trivial in the relative mapping class group. This gives many new examples of non-trivial boundary Dehn twists.
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The monodromy diffeomorphism of weighted singularities and Seiberg--Witten theory
We prove that the monodromy diffeomorphism of a complex 2-dimensional isolated hypersurface singularity of weighted-homogeneous type has infinite order in the smooth mapping class group of the Milnor fiber, provided the singularity is not a rational double point. This is a consequence of our main result: the boundary Dehn twist diffeomorphism of an indefinite symplectic filling of the canonical contact structure on a negatively-oriented Seifert-fibered rational homology 3-sphere has infinite order in the smooth mapping class group. Our techniques make essential use of analogues of the contact invariant in the setting of $\mathbb{Z}/p$-equivariant Seiberg--Witten--Floer homology of 3-manifolds.
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The homology of moduli spaces of 4-manifolds may be infinitely generated
For a simply-connected closed manifold $X$ of $\dim X \neq 4$, the mapping class group $π_0(\mathrm{Diff}(X))$ is known to be finitely generated. We prove that analogous finite generation fails in dimension 4. Namely, we show that there exist simply-connected closed smooth 4-manifolds whose mapping class groups are not finitely generated. More generally, for each $k>0$, we prove that there are simply-connected closed smooth 4-manifolds $X$ for which $H_k(B\mathrm{Diff}(X);\mathbb{Z})$ are not finitely generated. The infinitely generated subgroup of $H_k(B\mathrm{Diff}(X);\mathbb{Z})$ which we detect are topologically trivial, and unstable under the connected sum of $S^2 \times S^2$. The proof uses characteristic classes obtained from Seiberg-Witten theory.
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On four-dimensional Dehn twists and Milnor fibrations
We study the monodromy diffeomorphism of Milnor fibrations of isolated complex surface singularities, by computing the family Seiberg--Witten invariant of Seifert-fibered Dehn twists using recent advances in monopole Floer homology. More precisely, we establish infinite order non-triviality results for boundary Dehn twists on indefinite symplectic fillings of links of minimally elliptic surface singularities. Using this, we exhibit a wide variety of new phenomena in dimension four: (1) smoothings of isolated complex surface singularities whose Milnor fibration has monodromy with infinite order as a diffeomorphism but with finite order as a homeomorphism, (2) robust Torelli symplectomorphisms that do not factor as products of Dehn--Seidel twists, (3) compactly supported exotic diffeomorphisms of exotic $\mathbb{R}^4$'s and contractible manifolds.
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Exotically knotted closed surfaces from Donaldson's diagonalization for families
We introduce a method to detect exotic surfaces without explicitly using a smooth 4-manifold invariant or an invariant of a 4-manifold-surface pair in the construction. Our main tools are two versions of families (Seiberg-Witten) generalizations of Donaldson's diagonalization theorem, including a real and families version of the diagonalization. This leads to an example of a pair of exotically knotted $\mathbb{R}P^2$'s embedded in a closed 4-manifold whose complements are diffeomorphic, making it the first example of a non-orientable surface with this property. In particular, any invariant of a 4-manifold-surface pair (including invariants from real Seiberg-Witten theory such as Miyazawa's invariant) fails to detect such an exotic $\mathbb{R} P^2$. One consequence of our construction reveals that non-effective embeddings of corks can still be useful in pursuit of exotica. Precisely, starting with an embedding of a cork $C$ in certain a 4-manifold $X$ where the cork-twist does not change the diffeomorphism type of $X$, we give a construction that provides examples of exotically knotted spheres and $\mathbb{R}P^2$'s with diffeomorphic complements in $ C \# S^2 \times S^2 \subset X \# S^2 \times S^2$ or $C \# \mathbb{C}P^2 \subset X \# \mathbb{C}P^2 $. In another direction, we provide infinitely many exotically knotted embeddings of orientable surfaces, closed surface links, and 3-spheres with diffeomorphic complements in once stabilized corks, and show some of these surfaces survive arbitrarily many internal stabilizations. By combining similar methods with Gabai's 4D light-bulb theorem, we also exhibit arbitrarily large difference between algebraic and geometric intersections of certain family of 2-spheres, embedded in a 4-manifold.
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Diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds with boundary and exotic embeddings
We define family versions of the invariant of 4-manifolds with contact boundary due to Kronheimer and Mrowka and use these to detect exotic diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds with boundary. Further, we show the existence of the first example of exotic 3-spheres in a smooth closed 4-manifold with diffeomorphic complements.
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On localizing groups of exotic diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds
Ruberman in the 90's showed that the group of exotic diffeomorphisms of closed 4-manifolds can be infinitely generated. We provide various results on the question of when such infinite generation can localize to a smaller embedded submanifold of the original manifold. Our results include: (1) All known infinitely generated groups of exotic diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds detected by families Seiberg-Witten theory do not localize to any topologically (locally-flatly) embedded rational homology balls in the ambient 4-manifold. (2) Many exotic diffeomorphisms cannot be obtained as Dehn twists along homology spheres (under mild assumptions). (3) There is no contractible 4-manifolds with Seifert fibered boundary that have a universal property for exotic diffeomorphisms analogous to a universal cork. In addition, there is no universal compact 4-manifold $W$ such that the set of exotic diffeomorphisms of a 4-manifold can localize to an embedding of $W$. (4) Certain infinite generations of exotic diffeomorphism groups do localize to a non-compact subset $V$ with a small Betti number, but not to any compact subset of $V$. (5) An analogous result holds for mapping class groups of 4-manifolds.
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Exotic Dehn twists on 4-manifolds
We initiate the study of exotic Dehn twists along 3-manifolds $\neq S^3$ inside $4$-manifolds, which produces the first known examples of exotic diffeomorphisms of contractible 4-manifolds, more generally of definite 4-manifolds, and exotic diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds with $\neq S^3$ boundary that survive after one stabilization. We also construct the smallest closed 4-manifold known to support an exotic diffeomorphism. These exotic diffeomorphisms are the Dehn twists along certain Seifert fibered 3-manifolds. As a consequence, we get loops of diffeomorphisms of 3-manifolds that topologically extend to some 4-manifolds $X$ but not smoothly so, implying the non-surjectivity of $\pi_1(\mathrm{Diff}(X)) \to \pi_1(\mathrm{Homeo}(X))$. Our method uses $2$-parameter families Seiberg-Witten theory over $\mathbb{RP}^2$, while known methods to detect exotic diffeomorphisms used $1$-parameter families gauge-theoretic invariants. Using a similar strategy, we construct a new kind of exotic diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds, given as commutators of diffeomorphisms.
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Involutions, links, and Floer cohomologies
We develop a version of Seiberg--Witten Floer cohomology/homotopy type for a spin$^c$ 4-manifold with boundary and with an involution which reverses the spin$^c$ structure, as well as a version of Floer cohomology/homotopy type for oriented links with non-zero determinant. This framework generalizes the previous work of the authors regarding Floer homotopy type for spin 3-manifolds with involutions and for knots. Based on this Floer cohomological setting, we prove Frøyshov-type inequalities which relate topological quantities of 4-manifolds with certain equivariant homology cobordism invariants. The inequalities and homology cobordism invariants have applications to the topology of unoriented surfaces, Nielsen realization problem for non-spin 4-manifolds, and non-smoothable unoriented surfaces in 4-manifolds.
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From diffeomorphisms to exotic phenomena in small 4-manifolds
We provide an approach to study exotic phenomena in relatively small 4-manifolds that captures many different exotic behaviors under one umbrella. These phenomena include exotic smooth structures on 4-manifolds with $b_2=1$, examples of strong corks, and exotic codimension-$1$ embeddings into $\mathbb{C} P^2 \# - \mathbb{C} P^2$ that survive external stabilization. We also give a new way to detect a homeomorphism of a 4-manifold that is not topologically isotopic to any diffeomorphism and give lower bounds of relative genera of certain knots. Our primary tools are constraints on diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds obtained from families Seiberg-Witten theory.
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Dehn twists and the Nielsen realization problem for spin 4-manifolds
We prove that, for a closed oriented smooth spin 4-manifold $X$ with non-zero signature, the Dehn twist about a $(+2)$- or $(-2)$-sphere in $X$ is not homotopic to any finite order diffeomorphism. In particular, we negatively answer the Nielsen realization problem for each group generated by the mapping class of a Dehn twist. We also show that there is a discrepancy between the Nielsen realization problems in the topological category and smooth category for connected sums of copies of $K3$ and $S^{2} \times S^{2}$. The main ingredients of the proofs are Y. Kato's 10/8-type inequality for involutions and a refinement of it.
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Exotic codimension-1 submanifolds in 4-manifolds and stabilizations
In a small simply-connected closed 4-manifold, we construct infinitely many pairs of exotic codimension-$1$ submanifolds with diffeomorphic complements that remain exotic after any number of stabilizations by $ S^2 \times S^2$. We also give new constructions of exotic embeddings of 3-spheres in 4-manifolds with diffeomorphic complements.
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Homological instability for moduli spaces of smooth 4-manifolds
We prove that homological stability fails for the moduli space of any simply-connected closed smooth 4-manifold in any degree of homology, unlike what happens in all dimensions $\neq 4$. We detect also the homological discrepancy between various moduli spaces, such as topological and smooth moduli spaces of 4-manifolds, and moduli spaces of 4-manifolds with positive scalar curvature metrics. To prove these results, we use the Seiberg-Witten equations to construct a new characteristic class of families of 4-manifolds, which is unstable and detects the difference between the smooth and topological categories in dimension 4.
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A note on generalized Thurston--Bennequin inequalities
We give a generalized Thurston--Bennequin-type inequality for links in $S^3$ using a Bauer--Furuta-type invariant for 4-manifolds with contact boundary. As a special case, we also give an adjunction inequality for smoothly embedded orientable surfaces with negative intersection in a closed oriented smooth 4-manifold whose non-equivariant Bauer--Furuta invariant is non-zero.
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