Null-homologous exotic surfaces in 4-manifolds (Q2663331)

The main results are as follows. For a smooth 4-manifold \(X\) satisfying certain conditions, there is an infinite family of tori in \(X\) that are topologically isotopic to the unknotted torus but smoothly distinct from each other. Here, the unknotted torus is a torus bounding a solid handlebody in \(X\). This result implies that there exists a 4-manifold that contains an exotically embedded torus \(T\) such that \(T\) is stably ribbon but not ribbon. \newline In the proof, the authors consider a certain sequence of knots \(\{K_j \}\) in \(S^3\) with unknotting number one, and construct tori \(\{\mathcal{T}_{K_j}\}\) that are null-homologous by using the idea of knot surgery. The tori \(\mathcal{T}_{K_j}\) are topologically isotopic to the unknotted torus by a result due to the second author [Int. Math. Res. Not. 2015, No. 17, 7950--7978 (2015; Zbl 1326.57043)]. Using Seiberg-Witten theory, the authors give an invariant of null-homologous tori and show that the \(\mathcal{T}_{K_j}\) are smoothly distinct.