Representing homology classes of \(S^ 2\times S^ 2\) (Q801337)

The following theorems are proved. Theorem. Let M be a simply connected differentiable manifold of dimension 4 without boundary. Let \(\xi_ 1,\xi_ 2,\zeta_ 1,\zeta_ 2,...,\zeta_ m\) be generators of \(H_ 2(M^ 4;{\mathbb{Z}})=\oplus^{m+2} {\mathbb{Z}}\) (m\(\geq 0)\) and the intersection form with respect to the above generators be \(\left( \begin{matrix} 0\\ - 1\end{matrix} \begin{matrix} -1\\ 0\end{matrix} \right)\oplus <1>\oplus <1>\oplus...\oplus <1>.\) Then the homology class \(\gamma =p\xi_ 1+q\xi_ 2+\sum^{n}_{i=1}\zeta_ i\) (0\(\leq n\leq m)\) cannot be represented by a smoothly embedded 2-sphere in M provided \(p\geq 2\), \(q\geq 2\) and \(0\leq n\leq 2pq-1.\) The following theorem is obtained as a corollary to the above theorem. Let \(S^ 2\) be the 2-sphere and \(\xi_ 1,\xi_ 2\) be natural generators of \(H_ 2(S^ 2\times S^ 2;{\mathbb{Z}})\). Then \(\gamma =p\xi_ 1+q\xi_ 2\), p,q\(\in {\mathbb{Z}}\) can be represented by a smoothly embedded 2-sphere in \(S^ 2\times S^ 2\) if and only if \(| p| \leq 1\) or \(| q| \leq 1\). This solves an old problem.