Exotic Mazur manifolds and knot trace invariants (Q2232728)

A Mazur manifold is a compact, contractible \(4\)-manifold with a handle decomposition consisting of a single \(0\)-handle, a single \(1\)-handle, and a single \(2\)-handle. The paper under review constructs the first pairs of Mazur manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic. This is challenging since most smooth \(4\)-manifold invariants are trivial on manifolds with trivial second homology. The key insight of the paper is to associate knot traces to Mazur manifolds, whereby knot invariants and \(3\)-manifold invariants can be applied to the problem. As a corollary to the existence of exotic Mazur manifolds, integer homology \(3\)-spheres admitting two distinct surgeries to \(S^1 \times S^2\) are produced, answering Problem 1.16 in Kirby's list.