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[PAST EVENT] Constructions of Exotic 4-Manifolds and Involutions
October 5, 2012
2pm - 3pm
In this talk, I will outline some of the now common techniques used to construct families of 4-manifolds that are homeomorphic and pairwise nondiffeomorphic. These constructions involve performing torus surgeries on a symplectic 4-manifold while carefully controlling their effect on the fundamental group of the manifold. I will also demonstrate that, in certain cases, this construction can be performed so that the resulting manifolds admit smooth involutions; in some cases, the quotients of these involutions may produce other exotic 4-manifolds.