Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

In dimension 4, there exist simply connected manifolds which are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic; the difference between the distinct smooth structures can be localized using corks. Similarly, there exist diffeomorphisms of simply connected 4-manifolds which are topologically but not smoothly isotopic to the identity. In this talk, I will discuss some preliminary results towards an analogous localization of this phenomena using corks for diffeomorphisms. This project is joint work with Slava Krushkal, Anubhav Mukherjee, and Mark Powell.