Contractible open 3-manifolds which non-trivially cover only non-compact 3-manifolds (Q1292672)

In previous work, the author solved a longstanding problem by giving the first specific examples of open contractible 3-manifolds that cannot be covering spaces of compact 3-manifolds [\textit{R. Myers}, Topology 27, No. 1, 27-35 (1988; Zbl 0658.57007)]. In fact, he showed that genus-one Whitehead manifolds (irreducible, contractible open manifolds which are monotone unions of solid tori, but are not homeomorphic to \({\mathbb R}^3\)) cannot admit any nontrivial, torsion free groups of covering translations. The class of such examples was enlarged by \textit{D. G. Wright} [ibid. 31, No. 2, 281-291 (1992; Zbl 0755.57009)], and by \textit{F. C. Tinsley} and \textit{D. G. Wright} [Topology Appl. 77, No. 3, 291-301 (1997; Zbl 0879.57001)]. In this paper, the author gives a more delicate kind of example, obtaining specific contractible open 3-manifolds which do admit infinite groups of covering transformations, but which cannot cover any compact 3-manifold. The examples are constructed by gluing together contractible 3-manifolds with 2-plane boundaries in a certain way, so that in the mapping class group of the resulting manifold \(W\), every nontrivial torsion-free subgroup has a subgroup of finite index which either has infinite abelianization or has a nontrival normal abelian subgroup. This uses some previous work of the author on mapping class groups of Whitehead manifolds. If \(G\) is a group of covering transformations on \(W\), a theorem of \textit{R. Geoghegan} and \textit{M. L. Mihalik} [Topology 35, No. 3, 655-669 (1996; Zbl 0860.57002)] implies that there must be an isomorphic image of \(G\) in the mapping class group of \(W\). So if \(W/G\) were compact, a finite covering of \(W/G\) would be a closed irreducible 3-manifold whose fundamental group had infinite abelianization or a nontrival normal abelian subgroup, which is known to imply that its universal cover \(W\) is~\({\mathbb R}^3\).