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Using 2-torsion to obstruct topological isotopy

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Speaker: 
Hannah Schwartz
Affiliation: 
Bryn Mawr College
Date: 
Mon, 15/10/2018 - 16:30 - 18:00
Location: 
MPIM Lecture Hall
Parent event: 
MPIM Topology Seminar
It is well known that two knots in S^3 are ambiently isotopic if and only if there is an orientation preserving automorphism of S^3 carrying one knot to the other. In this talk, we will examine a family of smooth 4-manifolds in which the analogue of this fact does not hold, i.e. each manifold contains a pair of smoothly embedded, homotopic 2-spheres that are related by a diffeomorphism, but not smoothly isotopic. In particular, the presence of 2-torsion in the fundamental groups of these 4-manifolds can be used to obstruct even a topological isotopy between the 2-spheres; this shows that Gabai's recent ``4D Lightbulb Theorem" does not hold without the 2-torsion hypothesis.   
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