A counterexample to the strong version of Freedman's conjecture

DOI10.4007/ANNALS.2008.168.675zbMATH Open1176.57025arXivmath/0610865OpenAlexW2162346763WikidataQ122888445 ScholiaQ122888445MaRDI QIDQ2389124FDOQ2389124

Authors: Vyacheslav Krushkal 

Publication date: 14 July 2009

Published in: Annals of Mathematics. Second Series (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: A long-standing conjecture due to Michael Freedman asserts that the 4-dimensional topological surgery conjecture fails for non-abelian free groups, or equivalently that a family of canonical examples of links (the generalized Borromean rings) are not A-B slice. A stronger version of the conjecture, that the Borromean rings are not even weakly A-B slice, where one drops the equivariant aspect of the problem, has been the main focus in search for an obstruction to surgery. We show that the Borromean rings, and more generally all links with trivial linking numbers, are in fact weakly A-B slice. This result shows the lack of a non-abelian extension of Alexander duality in dimension 4, and of an analogue of Milnor's theory of link homotopy for general decompositions of the 4-ball.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0610865

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Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Embeddings and immersions in topological manifolds (57N35) Surgery and handlebodies (57R65)

Cited In (7)

• Are the Borromean rings A-B-slice
• A \(\text{homotopy}^+\) solution to the A-B slice problem
• Examples around the strong Viterbo conjecture
• ENGEL RELATIONS IN 4-MANIFOLD TOPOLOGY
• Casson towers and slice links
• Round handle problem
• ``Slicing the Hopf link

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