Exotic spheres and chirality (Ex)

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Recall that \Theta_n denotes the group of h-cobordism classes of manifolds \Sigma^n which are homotopy equivalent to the n-sphere. For n \neq 4 this is the same as the group of oriented diffeomorphism classes of such manifolds.

Exercise 0.1. Let \Sigma a homotopy n-sphere with n \geq 5. Show that \Sigma admits an orientation reversing diffeomorphism if and only if \Sigma defines and element of order two in \Theta_n.

As a consequence, show that the boundary of the 8-dimensional E_8-manifold does not admit an orientation reversing diffeomorphism.

Remark 0.2. Note that manifolds admitting no orientation reversing diffeomorphism are often called chiral.

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