Exotically knotted 2-spheres and the fundamental groups of their complements

Abstract

We show that for any finitely presented group $G$, there is a simply connected closed 4-manifold containing an infinite family of topologically isotopic but smoothly inequivalent 2-links whose 2-link group is $G$. We also show that, if $G$ satisfies the necessary topological conditions, these 2-links have nullhomotopic components.

11 pages, 3 figures. Lemma 5.1 added + referees' suggestions. To appear in Proc. Amer. Math. Soc