Classification of Manifolds - Dimension 4: Exotic

Dimension 4: Exotic

For more details on this topic, see 4-manifold.

4-dimensional manifolds are the most unusual: they are not geometrizable (as in lower dimensions), and surgery works topologically, but not differentiably.

Since topologically, 4-manifolds are classified by surgery, the differentiable classification question is phrased in terms of "differentiable structures": "which (topological) 4-manifolds admit a differentiable structure, and on those that do, how many differentiable structures are there?"

4-manifolds often admit many unusual differentiable structures, most strikingly the uncountably infinitely many exotic differentiable structures on R4. Similarly, differentiable 4-manifolds is the only remaining open case of the generalized Poincaré conjecture.

Read more about this topic:  Classification Of Manifolds

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