Shadows of acyclic 4-manifolds with sphere boundary

Abstract

In terms of Turaev's shadows, we provide a sufficient condition for a compact, smooth, acyclic 4-manifold with boundary the 3-sphere to be diffeomorphic to the standard 4-ball. As a consequence, we prove that if a compact, smooth, acyclic 4-manifold with boundary the 3-sphere has shadow-complexity at most 2, then it is diffeomorphic to the standard 4-ball.

14 pages, 12 figures, plus appendices