arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Rob Kirby.
Canonical framings and stable framings for the tangent bundle of a spin 3-manifold are introduced, and illustrated by a number of familiar examples. Methods for constructing canonical framings, and for comparing them with other naturally defined framings, are discussed.
This is primarily an exposition, combining work of several authors (Curtis, Hsiang, Freedman, Stong, Matveyev, and Bizaca), of the proof that a smooth 5-dimensional h-cobordism between simply connected 4-manifolds is a product off of a contractible piece which itself is diffeomorphic to the 5-ball.