Exotic Smooth Structures on Rational Surfaces
| MEMBERS SEMINAR | |
| Topic: | Exotic Smooth Structures on Rational Surfaces |
| Speaker: | Andras Stipsicz |
| Affiliation: | IAS |
| Date: | Monday, March 28 |
| Time/Room: | 4:00pm - 5:00pm/S-101 |
Most known smoothable simply connected 4--manifolds admit infinitely many different smooth structures (distinguished, for example, by Seiberg--Witten invariants). There are some 4--manifolds, though, for which the existence of such 'exotic' structures is still open, the most notable examples being the 4--dimensional sphere S^4 and the complex projective plane CP^2. In a recent project with Z. Szabo and J. Park we found constructions of exotic smooth structures on the five- and six-fold blow--up of CP^2. In the lecture we describe the construction of these 4--manifolds and indicate the necessary input from Seiberg--Witten theory for proving their exoticness.