The Casson-Sullivan invariant for homeomorphisms of 4-manifolds

Abstract

We investigate the realisability of the Casson-Sullivan invariant for homeomorphisms of smooth $4$-manifolds, which is the obstruction to a homeomorphism being stably pseudo-isotopic to a diffeomorphism, valued in the third cohomology of the source manifold with $\mathbb{Z}/2$-coefficients. We prove that for all pairs of orientable, homeomorphic, smooth $4$-manifolds this invariant can be realised fully after stabilising with a single $S^2\times S^2$. As an application, we obtain that topologically isotopic surfaces in a smooth, simply-connected $4$-manifold become smoothly isotopic after sufficient external stabilisations. We further demonstrate cases where this invariant can be realised fully without stabilisation for self-homeomorphisms, which includes for manifolds with finite cyclic fundamental group. This method allows us to produce many examples of homeomorphisms which are not stably pseudo-isotopic to any diffeomorphism but are homotopic to the identity. Finally, we reinterpret these results in terms of finding examples of smooth structures on $4$-manifolds which are diffeomorphic but not stably pseudo-isotopic.

v1: 40 pages, 1 figure. Comments welcome! v2: 43 pages, 1 figure. Incorporated referee's comments. Final version to appear in Compositio Mathematica