A novel construction of homotopy 4-spheres and real projective 4-spaces à la Cappell-Shaneson

Abstract

We produce new collections of homotopy 4-spheres and homotopy real projective 4-spaces by extending a classical construction due to Cappell-Shaneson. We use the extension to devise a mechanism that produces sets of smooth 4-manifolds within a given homeomorphism class that satisfies a mild topological condition.