Smooth structures on collarable ends of 4-manifolds (Q1384300)

The authors prove some results about exotic smooth structures of 4-manifolds, and nonexistence of certain types of smooth embeddings of 4-manifolds. The main idea is a construction involving Casson handles which produces a family of open 4-manifolds \(R_n\) which are end sums of exotic smooth \({\mathbb R}^4\)'s. The key embedding theorem says that if \(X\) is any closed smooth spin 4-manifold, then for all sufficiently large \(n\), \(R_n\) cannot be smoothly embedded into \(X\) nor into any closed smooth spin 4-manifold with the same intersection form as \(X\). The proof consists of showing that such an embedding would lead to the existence of a 4-manifold contradicting an estimate of Furuta, which says that if a closed smooth spin 4-manifold has intersection form \((\oplus_kE_8)\oplus(\oplus_\ell H)\), where \(H\) is the \(2\times 2\) hyperbolic matrix, then \(\ell>k+1\) (conjecturally, \(\ell\geq 3k/2\)). The embedding theorem implies that \(R_n\) cannot be embedded into any negative definite smooth 4-manifold. Other applications include a proof that if \(M\) is any compact 3-manifold, then \(M\times{\mathbb R}\) has infinitely many smooth structures, as does any open 4-manifold \(X\) which has an end homeomorphic to \(M\times{\mathbb R}\) and which satisfies certain hypotheses on its other ends.