Geography of simply connected spin symplectic 4-manifolds (Q2275709)

The authors present an algorithm for constructing infinitely many nondiffeomorphic simply connected, spin, irreducible smooth 4-manifolds, either symplectic or nonsymplectic, for a given homeomorphism class, which has interesting applications in the geography problem of spin 4-manifolds. More precisely, the authors consider even intersection forms \(p E_8\oplus q H\), where \(p\geq 0\) is an even integer, \(q>0\) is an odd integer. For any given such \(p\), let \(\Lambda_p\) be the smallest positive odd integer such that for any \(q\geq \Lambda_p\), there are infinitely many nondiffeomorphic simply connected, spin, irreducible symplectic as well as nonsymplectic 4-manifolds, which realize the form \(p E_8\oplus q H\). Then the authors show that for any even integer \(p\geq 0\), if an odd integer \(n\geq 3\) satisfies \(p\leq \frac{1}{3}n(n^2-1)-2\), then \(\Lambda_p\leq 10 n^3+2n-1-10p\). For instance, taking \(p=0\), \(n=3\), one has \(\Lambda_0\leq 275\). Consequently, for any odd integer \(q\geq 275\), there are infinitely many nondiffeomorphic, irreducible smooth 4-manifolds homeomorphic to the connected sum of \(q\) copies of \(S^2\times S^2\), where these manifolds may be arranged to be either symplectic or nonsymplectic.