Infinitely many small exotic Stein fillings (Q2347210)

Stein 4-manifolds enjoy some rigidity properties which make them interesting in the study of the topology of 4-manifolds. In particular, it is a challenging problem to identify Stein 4-manifolds which are homeomorphic but mutually non-diffeomorphic. In the present paper, the authors construct infinitely many simply connected compact Stein 4-manifolds with second Betti number \(b_2=2\), which are all homeomorphic but mutually non-diffeomorphic. Furthermore, all the constructed Stein 4-manifolds are exotic \textsl{Stein fillings} of a common contact 3-manifolds, i.e., they are all bounded by the same contact 3-manifold.