Equivariant corks (Q2398834)

A pair \((C,g)\) is called a cork if \(C\) is a smooth, compact, contractible 4-manifold, and \(g\) is an arbitrary diffeomorphism of \(\partial C\). If \(g\) extends to a diffeomorphism of the entire \(C\), then \((C,g)\) is called trivial. A cork embedding of \((C,g)\) in a 4-manifold \(X\) is a smooth embedding \(e:C\hookrightarrow X\) together with the induced map \(\overline g=ege^{-1}\) on the boundary of its image \(\overline C=e(C)\). A cork twist \(X^e_g=(X-\text{int}\overline C)\cup_{\overline g}\overline C\) is obtained by removing \(\overline C\) from \(X\) and regluing using \(\overline g\). If \(G\) is a subgroup of the diffeomorphism group of \(\partial C\), then \((C,g)\) is called a \(G\)-cork. If \(G\) is cyclic of finite order \(n\), then \((C,g)\) are called \(n\)-corks. If the group \(G\) is a subgroup of the mapping class group of the boundary, then a cork is called a weakly equivariant cork. It is natural to ask whether cutting and gluing by higher order diffeomorphisms of the boundary of a contractible submanifold of a 4-manifold can change the underlying smooth structure. In this paper, the authors give an affirmative answer, by producing examples of embeddings of contractible 4-manifolds with twists of arbitrary finite order that alter the ambient smooth structure. They show that for suitable finite groups \(G\), there exist contractible 4-manifolds with effective \(G\)-actions on the boundary that embed in closed 4-manifolds so that twists corresponding to distinct elements of \(G\) yield distinct smooth structures. It is shown that there exist \(G\)-corks for any finite subgroup \(G\) of \(\text{SO}(4)\). Also, the authors show that there are groups \(G\) that do not act effectively on any homology sphere, but for which there exist weak equivariant \(G\)-corks. Finally, they show that for an oriented \(3\)-manifold \(Y\) with an effective, orientation-preserving, smooth action of a finite group \(G\), there is an equivariant invertible \(\mathbb Z[\pi_1(Y)]\)-homology cobordism from it to a hyperbolic manifold.