Smooth structure of some symplectic surfaces (Q5954601)

\textit{C. T. McMullen} and \textit{C. H. Taubes} [Math. Res. Lett. 6, No. 5-6, 681-696 (1999; Zbl 0964.53051)] gave the first example of a simply connected smooth 4-manifold which admits two inequivalent symplectic structures, using a cut-and-paste procedure involving a particular 4-component link \(K\subset S^3\) and four copies of the rational elliptic surface \(E(1)\). Their construction bears a resemblance to another cut-and-paste procedure, the link surgery of \textit{R. Fintushel} and \textit{R. J. Stern} [Invent. Math. 134, No. 2, 363-400 (1998; Zbl 0914.57015)], whose parameters include the choice of a link in \(S^3\). In this paper, the author shows that indeed the McMullen-Taubes manifold is diffeomorphic to the manifold obtained by performing Fintushel-Stern link surgery to \(E(1)\) using the link \(K\). In addition, making explicit this correspondence has the interesting consequence of giving, in the last section of the paper, a new symplectic structure on this manifold.