A 2-knot connected-sum and 4-dimensional diffeomorphism (Q2467687)

A cusp neighborhood \(C\) is the \(4\)-manifold obtained by performing \(0\)-framed surgery on a right-handed trefoil knot on the boundary of the \(4\)-ball. The manifold \(C\) is an elliptic surface over \(D^2\) with only one singular fibre as cusp. Suppose that \(X\) is a smooth \(4\)-manifold containing a cusp neighborhood. The notion of \textit{knot concordance surgery} on \(X\) was introduced by Akbulut: given a knot \(K\) in \(S^3\) and a self-concordance \(\phi \colon S^1\times I\to S^3\times I\) of \(K\) a new manifold \(X_\phi\) is obtained from \(X\) by replacing a neighborhood of a torus, which is a general fibre near the cusp fibre of \(C\), by a certain manifold related to \(\phi\) [see \textit{S. Akbulut}, Turk. J. Math. 26, No.~1, 81--92 (2002; Zbl 1007.57019)]. This operation generalises the \textit{Fintushel-Stern knot surgery} [see \textit{R. Fintushel} and \textit{R. J. Stern}, Invent. Math. 134, No.~2, 363--400 (1998; Zbl 0914.57015)]. Let \(T_0\) be a \(2\)-torus obtained from the trivial self-concordance of the unknot and \(S\) a spun \(2\)-knot. In a previous paper the author of the article under review had proved that if one considers surgeries on \(X\) along \(T_0\) and \(T_0\# S\) then the resulting 4-manifolds are diffeomorphic [see \textit{M. Tange}, J. Knot Theory Ramifications 14, No.~5, 539--563 (2005; Zbl 1083.57043)]. In the article under review the author generalises this result in the following way: the torus \(T_0\) may be replaced by a torus \(T\) obtained from the trivial self-concordance of an arbitrary knot in \(S^3\). Secondly, the assumption on \(S\) is weakened by considering \textit{ribbon \(2\)-knots in double position}. Theorem 1.1 proves that the Akbulut surgeries corresponding to \(T\) and \(T\# S\) yield diffeomorphic \(4\)-manifolds.