Fundamental groups of homology 4-spheres and complements of contractible submanifolds

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Fix a prime pp, and for a group or space XX let βip(X)\beta_i^p(X) denote the dimension of Hi(X,Zp)H_i(X,\mathbf{Z}_p). A homology 4-sphere is a 4-manifold with the homology of the 4-sphere, and a contractible submanifold is a submanifold of the 4-sphere that is contractible. Homology-sphere complement conjecture. A group is the fundamental group of a homology 4-sphere if and only if it is the fundamental group of the complement of a contractible submanifold of the 4-sphere. This is an open problem because there is no characterization of the fundamental groups of homology 4-spheres, and it is also unknown whether such a characterization must depend on the smooth or topological category.

References

Primary source

Charles Livingston, “Four-manifolds of large negative deficiency”, arXiv:math/0302026 (2003).

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