Shadows of acyclic 4-manifolds with sphere boundary (Q2664144)

According to \textit{V. G. Turaev} [J. Differ. Geom. 36 (1), 35--74 (1992; Zbl 0773.57012); Quantum invariants of knots and 3-manifolds. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (2016; Zbl 1346.57002)], a \emph{shadow} of a 4-manifold \(M\) with boundary is a simple polyhedron \(X\) properly embedded in \(M\) so that \(M\) collapses to \(X\), and \(X\) is locally flat in \(M\); moreover, the \emph{shadow complexity} of \(M\) is the minimum number of vertices of a shadow of \(M\). Within shadow theory, the \textit{connected complexity} of a simple polyhedron \(X\) is defined as the maximum number of vertices contained in some connected component of the singular set of \(X\), while the \emph{connected shadow complexity} of a 4-manifold \(M\) is defined as the minimum connected complexity of a shadow of \(M\): see [\textit{Y. Koda} et al., ``Four-manifolds with shadow-complexity one'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1803.06713}]. The present paper takes into account compact, smooth, acyclic 4-manifolds \(M\), with \(\partial M = \mathbb S^3\), and provides a condition -- called \textit{cancellation condition} -- on a shadow of \(M\), which ensures \(M\) to be diffeomorphic to the standard 4-ball \(\mathbb D^4\). As a consequence, the authors prove that every acyclic 4-manifold \(M\) of connected shadow-complexity at most 2, with \(\partial M = \mathbb S^3\), is diffeomorphic to \(\mathbb D^4\). In particular, the same holds if the shadow complexity of \(M\) is at most 2; hence, in virtue of \textit{H. Naoe}'s result characterizing \(\mathbb D^4\) as the unique acyclic 4-manifold of shadow complexity 0 [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 145, No. 10, 4561--4572 (2017; Zbl 1375.57030)], it follows that no acyclic 4-manifold \(M\) of shadow-complexity 1 or 2 exists, with \(\partial M = \mathbb S^3\).