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In differential topology, a branch of mathematics, a Mazur manifold is a contractible, compact, smooth four-dimensional manifold-with-boundary which is not diffeomorphic to the standard 4-ball. Usually these manifolds are further required to have a handle decomposition with a single $1$ -handle, and a single $2$ -handle; otherwise, they would simply be called contractible manifolds. The boundary of a Mazur manifold is necessarily a homology 3-sphere.

History

Barry Mazur^[1] and Valentin Poenaru^[2] discovered these manifolds simultaneously. Akbulut and Kirby showed that the Brieskorn homology spheres $\Sigma (2,5,7)$ , $\Sigma (3,4,5)$ and $\Sigma (2,3,13)$ are boundaries of Mazur manifolds, effectively coining the term `Mazur Manifold.'^[3] These results were later generalized to other contractible manifolds by Casson, Harer and Stern.^[4]^[5]^[6] One of the Mazur manifolds is also an example of an Akbulut cork which can be used to construct exotic 4-manifolds.^[7]

Mazur manifolds have been used by Fintushel and Stern^[8] to construct exotic actions of a group of order 2 on the 4-sphere.

Mazur's discovery was surprising for several reasons:

Every smooth homology sphere in dimension $n\geq 5$ is homeomorphic to the boundary of a compact contractible smooth manifold. This follows from the work of Kervaire^[9] and the h-cobordism theorem. Slightly more strongly, every smooth homology 4-sphere is diffeomorphic to the boundary of a compact contractible smooth 5-manifold (also by the work of Kervaire). But not every homology 3-sphere is diffeomorphic to the boundary of a contractible compact smooth 4-manifold. For example, the Poincaré homology sphere does not bound such a 4-manifold because the Rochlin invariant provides an obstruction.

The h-cobordism Theorem implies that, at least in dimensions $n\geq 6$ there is a unique contractible $n$ -manifold with simply-connected boundary, where uniqueness is up to diffeomorphism. This manifold is the unit ball $D^{n}$ . It's an open problem as to whether or not $D^{5}$ admits an exotic smooth structure, but by the h-cobordism theorem, such an exotic smooth structure, if it exists, must restrict to an exotic smooth structure on $S^{4}$ . Whether or not $S^{4}$ admits an exotic smooth structure is equivalent to another open problem, the smooth Poincaré conjecture in dimension four. Whether or not $D^{4}$ admits an exotic smooth structure is another open problem, closely linked to the Schoenflies problem in dimension four.

Mazur's observation

Let $M$ be a Mazur manifold that is constructed as $S^{1}\times D^{3}$ union a 2-handle. Here is a sketch of Mazur's argument that the double of such a Mazur manifold is $S^{4}$ . $M\times [0,1]$ is a contractible 5-manifold constructed as $S^{1}\times D^{4}$ union a 2-handle. The 2-handle can be unknotted since the attaching map is a framed knot in the 4-manifold $S^{1}\times S^{3}$ . So $S^{1}\times D^{4}$ union the 2-handle is diffeomorphic to $D^{5}$ . The boundary of $D^{5}$ is $S^{4}$ . But the boundary of $M\times [0,1]$ is the double of $M$ .

References

^ Mazur, Barry (1961). "A note on some contractible 4-manifolds". Ann. of Math. 73 (1): 221–228. doi:10.2307/1970288. JSTOR 1970288. MR 0125574.
^ Poenaru, Valentin (1960). "Les decompositions de l'hypercube en produit topologique". Bull. Soc. Math. France. 88: 113–129. doi:10.24033/bsmf.1546. MR 0125572.
^ Akbulut, Selman; Kirby, Robion (1979). "Mazur manifolds". Michigan Math. J. 26 (3): 259–284. doi:10.1307/mmj/1029002261. MR 0544597.
^ Casson, Andrew; Harer, John L. (1981). "Some homology lens spaces which bound rational homology balls". Pacific J. Math. 96 (1): 23–36. doi:10.2140/pjm.1981.96.23. MR 0634760.
^ Fickle, Henry Clay (1984). "Knots, Z-Homology 3-spheres and contractible 4-manifolds". Houston J. Math. 10 (4): 467–493. MR 0774711.
^ R.Stern (1978). "Some Brieskorn spheres which bound contractible manifolds". Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 25.
^ Akbulut, Selman (1991). "A fake compact contractible 4-manifold" (PDF). J. Differential Geom. 33 (2): 335–356. doi:10.4310/jdg/1214446320. MR 1094459.
^ Fintushel, Ronald; Stern, Ronald J. (1981). "An exotic free involution on $S^{4}$ ". Ann. of Math. 113 (2): 357–365. doi:10.2307/2006987. JSTOR 2006987. MR 0607896.
^ Kervaire, Michel A. (1969). "Smooth homology spheres and their fundamental groups". Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 144: 67–72. doi:10.1090/S0002-9947-1969-0253347-3. MR 0253347.

Rolfsen, Dale (1990), Knots and links. Corrected reprint of the 1976 original., Mathematics Lecture Series, vol. 7, Houston, TX: Publish or Perish, Inc., pp. 355–357, Chapter 11E, ISBN 0-914098-16-0, MR 1277811