Homotopy versus isotopy: 2-spheres in 5-manifolds (Q6651883)

The main result in the present paper is as follows. Let \(N\) be a \(5\)-manifold. Two homotopic spheres \(U, R: S^2 \hookrightarrow N\) are isotopic if and only if \(\mathrm{fq}_{U_*}(R)=0 \in \mathbb{A}_{U_*}\), where \(\mathbb{A}_{U_*}\) is the set of a certain quotient of the group ring \(\mathbb{Z}\pi_1N\) and \(\mathrm{fq}_{U_*}(R)=[\mu_3(H)]\) is an invariant given as the image of the self-intersections of a generic track \(H: S^2 \times I \looparrowright N \times I\) of a homotopy between \(U\) and \(R\). This implies that for 2-spheres in simply connected 5-manifolds, homotopy implies isotopy. The authors describe the isotopy classification by self-intersection invariants of homotopies, using a level preserving Whitney trick, and explain how Dax's work recovers the same result, using space level techniques and homotopy groups of embedding spaces. \newline The free isotopy invariant \(\mathrm{fq}_{U_*}(R)\) is given as the free version of the based isotopy invariant \(\mathrm{fq}_{U_*}(R_*)\) as follows. Let \(\mathbb{A}=\mathbb{Z} \pi_1N/\langle g+g^{-1}, 1\rangle\), and let \(\mu_3\) be the self-intersection invariant which is a map from the set of simply connected 3-manifolds immersed in the 6-manifold \(N \times I\) to \(\mathbb{A}\). Fix a based embedding \(U_*: S^2 \hookrightarrow N\), and define a homomorphism \(\phi_{[U_*]}: \pi_3N \to \mathbb{A}\) by \(\phi_{[U_*]}(A)=\mu_3(A)+[\lambda_N(A, [U_*])]\), where \(\mu_3\) is the self-intersection invariant on \(\pi_3(N \times I) \cong \pi_3N\) and \(\lambda_N\) is the intersection pairing between \(\pi_3N\) and \(\pi_2N\) taking values in \(\mathbb{Z}\pi_1N\). Define \(\mathbb{A}_{[U_*]}=\mathbb{A}/\phi_{[U_*]}(\pi_3N)\). For \(R_*: S^2 \hookrightarrow N\) which is based homotopic to \(U_*\), let \(H_*: S^2 \times I \looparrowright N \times I\) be a generic track of a based homotopy from \(U_*\) to \(R_*\), and define \(\mathrm{fq}_{[U_*]}(R_*)=[\mu_3(H_*)] \in \mathbb{A}_{[U_*]}\). The authors show that \(\mathrm{fq}_{U_*}(R_*)\) does not depend on the choice of homotopy, and vanishes if and only if \(R_*\) and \(U_*\) are based isotopic. The isotopy invariant \(\mathrm{fq}_{U_*}(R)\) is the free version given by considering free isotopy and an affine action on \(\mathbb{A}_{[U_*]}\) by the stabilizer subgroup of \([U_*] \in \pi_2N\).