Concordance implies isotopy for smooth structures on 3-manifolds?
1 Problem
A -manifold has a smooth structure which is essentially unique. One question is what does "essentially unique" mean.
In high dimensions, smooth structures can be classified either up to concordance or up to isotopy. In fact, in high dimensions concordance implies isotopy.
Let be a topological manifold and let
be a smooth manifold homeomorphic to
, one can ask if that smooth manifold
is diffeomorphic to a product,
![\displaystyle W \xrightarrow{diffeo} \partial_+ W \times I](/images/math/5/d/e/5de89e020016bfe1c28f05f68385288c.png)
This "concordance implies isotopy" theorem (see [Kirby&Siebenmann1977]) is:
- true in high dimensions,
.
Given a topological manifold , smooth structures can be classified as homotopy classes of maps
![\displaystyle \mathcal{S}^{TOP/O}(M^n) = [M^n, TOP/O].](/images/math/9/f/2/9f2ea4673893793e44cef13ea4dabade.png)
The structure set is the set of equivalence classes of smoothings on
. But it is important to decide what is meant by the "structure" and there are two possible equivalence relations: concordance or isotopy.
A smoothing is a homeomorphism from a smooth manifold to the topological manifold
.
![\displaystyle \Sigma \xrightarrow{homeo} M.](/images/math/e/f/4/ef4da338536dd07ef54f39ba08488971.png)
Two smoothings and
are concordant if there is a smooth manifold
and a homeomorphism to
that restricts to these two smoothings.
Two smoothings and
are isotopic if there is a smooth manifold
and a level-preserving homeomorphism
,
![\displaystyle (H(s, t) = (F(s, t), t))](/images/math/4/4/5/4451e87845c399fdec0698438842506c.png)
inducing for
Theorem 1.1. If dim , then concordant structures are isotopic (and hence diffeomorphic).
- false for simply-connected
-manifolds by the failure of the
-cobordism theorem. Cappell and Shaneson proved in the non-simply connected case that there are counterexamples to the
-cobordism theorem (See [Cappel&Shaneson1987] and [Cappell&Shaneson1987a]).
- we don't know the answer for
.
Question: Does concordance imply isotopy for smooth structures on -manifolds?
This question was posed by Jim Davis at the MATRIX meeting on Interactions between high and low dimensional topology.
2 References
- [Cappel&Shaneson1987] S. E. Cappell and J. L. Shaneson, Smooth nontrivial
-dimensional
-cobordisms, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 17 (1987), no.1, 141–143. MR888891
- [Cappell&Shaneson1987a] S. E. Cappell and J. L. Shaneson, Corrigendum to: ``Smooth nontrivial
-dimensional
-cobordisms, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 17 (1987), no.2, 401. MR903747
- [Kirby&Siebenmann1977] R. C. Kirby and L. C. Siebenmann, Foundational essays on topological manifolds, smoothings, and triangulations, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1977. MR0645390 (58 #31082) Zbl 0361.57004