Simple spines of homotopy 2-spheres are unique

Abstract

A locally flatly embedded $2$-sphere in a compact $4$-manifold $X$ is called a spine if the inclusion map is a homotopy equivalence. A spine is called simple if the complement of the $2$-sphere has abelian fundamental group. We prove that if two simple spines represent the same generator of $H_2(X)$ then they are ambiently isotopic. In particular, the theorem applies to simple shake-slicing $2$-spheres in knot traces.

22 pages, 2 figures. V2 to appear in Proc. LMS. V3 fixes an error in V2 relating to decorations on surgery obstruction groups