Construction of exotic smooth structures (Q870243)

There has been a recent flurry of activity in the discovery of infinite families of exotic smooth structures on simply-connected \(4\)-manifolds with small Euler characteristic [for details see \textit{R. Fintushel} and \textit{R. J. Stern}, J. Am. Math. Soc. 19, No. 1, 171--180 (2006; Zbl 1087.57019)]. All these infinite families of manifolds were constructed from the elliptic surfaces \(E(1)\) and \(E(2)\) by applying the sequence of knot surgery in double nodes, ordinary blowups and rational blowdown. In the paper under discussion the author obtains similar results starting from \(E(n)\), \(n\geq3\). Applying the sequence of knot surgery, ordinary blowups, and rational blowdown he constructs an infinite family of simply-connected, nonsymplectic and pairwise nondiffeomorphic manifolds with nontrivial Seiberg-Witten invariants.