Mazur manifolds and corks with small shadow complexities (Q1667190)

A \textit{cork} is a compact contractible Stein \(4\)-manifold together with an involution \(\tau: \partial C\to \partial C\) on the boundary such that \(\tau\) extends to a self-homeomorphism of \(C\) but not to a self-diffeomorphism. Corks play an important role in the study of exotic 4-manifolds. The first cork was found by \textit{S. Akbulut} [J. Differ. Geom. 33, No. 2, 335--356 (1991; Zbl 0839.57015)] A \textit{shadow} is an almost-special polyhedron \(P\) which is locally flat and properly embedded in a compact oriented 4-manifold \(W\) with boundary and a strong deformation retract of \(W\). By work of \textit{V. Turaev} [Quantum invariants of knots and 3-manifolds. 3rd edition. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (2016; Zbl 1346.57002)], \(W\) can be reconstructed from \(P\) together with a coloring by half-integers assigned to each region of \(P\). The \textit{shadow complexity} of a \(4\)-manifold is a the minimal number of true vertices among all shadows of \(W\) and was introduced by \textit{F. Costantino} [Exp. Math. 15, No. 2, 237--249 (2006; Zbl 1117.57020)]. In the article under review, the author studies manifolds of shadow complexity one and shows that there are infinitely many Mazur type manifolds and corks among them. Those contain the Mazur manifolds \(W^{\pm}(l,k)\) studied by \textit{S. Akbulut} and \textit{R. Kirby} [Mich. Math. J. 26, 259--284 (1979; Zbl 0443.57011)]. Mazur type manifolds and corks are also found among the manifolds constructed from a shadow with two true vertices, namely Bing's house.