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I
n the 1965 Hedrick Lectures,1 I described its uniqueness up to a PL-isomorphism that is
the state of differential topology, a field that topologically isotopic to the identity. In particular,
was then young but growing very rapidly. they proved the following.
During the intervening years, many problems
Theorem 1. If a topological manifold M n without
in differential and geometric topology that
boundary satisfies
had seemed totally impossible have been solved,
often using drastically new tools. The following is H 3 (M n ; Z/2) = H 4 (M n ; Z/2) = 0 with n 5,
a brief survey, describing some of the highlights then it possesses a PL-manifold structure that is
of these many developments. unique up to PL-isomorphism.
(For manifolds with boundary one needs n > 5.)
Major Developments
The corresponding theorem for all manifolds of
The first big breakthrough, by Kirby and Sieben-
dimension n 3 had been proved much earlier
mann [1969, 1969a, 1977], was an obstruction
by Moise [1952]. However, we will see that the
theory for the problem of triangulating a given
corresponding statement in dimension 4 is false.
topological manifold as a PL (= piecewise-linear)
An analogous obstruction theory for the prob-
manifold. (This was a sharpening of earlier work
lem of passing from a PL-structure to a smooth
by Casson and Sullivan and by Lashof and Rothen-
structure had previously been introduced by
berg. See [Ranicki, 1996].) If BTop and BPL are the
Munkres [1960, 1964a, 1964b] and Hirsch [1963].
stable classifying spaces (as described in the lec-
(See also [Hirsch-Mazur, 1974].) Furthermore, Cerf
tures), they showed that the relative homotopy
had filled in a crucial step, proving by a difficult
group j (BTop , BPL ) is cyclic of order two for j = 4,
geometric argument that the space of orientation-
and zero otherwise. Given an n-dimensional topo-
preserving diffeomorphisms of the three-sphere
logical manifold M n , it follows that there is an
is connected. (See the Cartan Seminar Lectures of
obstruction o H 4 (M n ; Z/2) to triangulating M n
1962/63, as well as [Cerf, 1968].) Combined with
as a PL-manifold. In dimensions n 5 this is other known results, this led to the following.
the only obstruction. Given such a triangulation,
there is a similar obstruction in H 3 (M n ; Z/2) to Theorem 2. Every PL-manifold of dimension n
7 possesses a compatible differentiable structure,
John Milnor is professor of mathematics at Stony Brook and this structure is unique up to diffeomorphism
University. His email address is jack@math.sunysb.edu. whenever n < 7.
The author would like to thank Mike Hopkins, Rob Kirby,
For more information see Further Details at the
Mark Mahowald, John Morgan, Larry Siebenmann, and
Jonathan Sondow for their help. He also wants to thank end of this article.
the NSF for its support under grant DMSO757856. The next big breakthrough was the classifi-
1
These lectures have recently been digitized by MSRI and cation of simply connected closed topological
should be available soon. Thanks to Dusa McDuff for 4-manifolds by Freedman [1982]. He proved, us-
unearthing the original tapes. (With regard to Wilders ing wildly nondifferentiable methods, that such a
introduction, compare [Milnor, 1999].) manifold is uniquely determined by
bp
one more exceptional case: The group S61 is also where Sn Sn stands for the subgroup
trivial. (Compare Further Details below.) represented by homotopy spheres that bound
parallelizable manifolds. This subgroup is the
Problem. Is the group Sn nontrivial for all
part of Sn that is best understood. It can be
n > 6 , n 6= 12, 61?
partially described as follows.
(Any precise computation for large n is impossi- bp
ble at the present time, since the stable homotopy Theorem 5. For n 6= 4 the group Sn is finite cyclic
groups of spheres have been computed completely with an explicitly known generator. In fact this
only up to dimension 64. However, it seems possi- group is:
ble that enough is known to decide this question trivial when n is even,
one way or another.) either trivial or cyclic of order two when
Denote the stable homotopy groups of spheres n = 4k 3, and
2k2
by cyclic
of order 2 (22k1 1) numerator
4Bk
n = n+q (Sq ) for q > n + 1 , k
when n = 4k 1 > 3.
and let Jn n be the image of the stable (This last number depends on the computation
Whitehead homomorphism J : n (SO) n . (See of |J4k1 | as described above.) In the odd cases,
[Whitehead, 1942].) This subgroup Jn is cyclic of setting n = 2q 1, an explicit generator for the
order3 bp
S2q1 can be constructed using one basic building
|Jn | = block, namely the tangent disk-bundle of the
q-sphere, together with one of the following two
Bk
denominator 4k
for n = 4k 1 ,
diagrams.
2 for n 0, 1 (mod 8) , and
1 for n 2, 4, 5, 6(mod 8) ,
where the Bk are Bernoulli numbers, for example,
1 1 1
B1 = , B2 = , B3 = ,
6 30 42
1 5 691
B4 = , B5 = , B6 = , Here each circle represents one of our
30 66 2730
2q-dimensional building blocks, which is a
B
and where the fraction 4kk must be reduced to 2q-dimensional parallelizable manifold with
lowest terms. (Compare [Milnor-Stasheff, 1974, boundary, and each dot represents a plumbing
Appendix B].) construction in which two of these manifolds are
According to Pontrjagin and Thom, the stable pasted across each other so that their central
n-stem n can also be described as the group q-spheres intersect transversally with intersection
of all framed cobordism classes of framed man- number +1. The result will be a smooth paral-
ifolds. (Here one considers manifolds smoothly lelizable manifold with corners. After smoothing
embedded in a high-dimensional Euclidean space, these corners we obtain a smooth manifold X 2q
and a framing means a choice of trivialization with smooth boundary.
for the normal bundle.) Every homotopy sphere For q odd, use the left diagram, and for q
is stably parallelizable, and hence possesses such even use the right diagram. In either case, if
a framing. If we change the framing, then the q 6= 2, the resulting smooth boundary X 2q will
corresponding class in n will be changed by an be a homotopy sphere representing the required
element of the subgroup Jn . Thus there is an exact bp
generator of S2q1 . (The case q = 2 is exceptional
sequence 4
since X has only the homology of the 3-sphere. In
bp
(1) 0 Snbp Sn n /Jn , all other cases where S2q1 is trivial, the boundary
will be diffeomorphic to the standard (2q 1)-
3 sphere.)
This computation of |J4k1 | is a special case of the
Adams conjecture [Adams, 1963, 1965]. The proof was The exact sequence (1) can be complemented
completed by Mahowald [1970], and the full Adams con- by the following information.
jecture was proved by Quillen [1971], Sullivan [1974],
and by Becker-Gottlieb [1975]. Adams also showed that Theorem 6. For n 6 2 (mod 4), every element
Jn is always a direct summand of n . of n can be represented by a topological sphere.
Table 3
k 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
9 7 12
bk 28 992 8128 261632 1.45 10 6.71 10 1.94 10 7.54 1014
k 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
bk 2.41016 3.41017 8.31021 7.41020 3.11025 5.1029 1.81031
On the other hand, Cerf proved5 that 0 Diff + (S3 ) [Becker-Gottlieb, 1975] J. C. Becker and D. H. Gottlieb,
= 0 and hence that 4 = 0 (although S4 is com- The transfer map and fiber bundles, Topology 14
pletely unknown). Using results about Sn as (1975), 112.
described above, it follows that n = 0 for n < 7, [Browder, 1969] W. Browder, The Kervaire invariant of
framed manifolds and its generalization, Ann. of
and that n is finite abelian for all n.
Math. 90 (1969), 157186.
The Munkres-Hirsch-Mazur obstructions to [Brumfiel, 1968] G. Brumfiel, On the homotopy groups
the existence of a smooth structure on a given of BPL and PL/O, Ann. of Math. 88 (1968), 291311.
PL-manifold M n lie in the groups H k (M n ; k1 ), [Brumfiel, 1969] , On the homotopy groups of BPL
whereas obstructions to its uniqueness lie in and PL/O. II, Topology 8 (1969), 305311.
H k (M n ; k ). (Unlike most of the constructions [Brumfiel, 1970] , On the homotopy groups of BPL
discussed above, this works even in dimension 4.) and PL/O. III, Michigan Math. J. 17 (1970), 217224.
Evidently Theorem 2 follows. [Cerf, 1968] J. Cerf, Sur les diffomorphismes de la
sphre de dimension trois (4 = 0), Lecture Notes in
For further historical discussion see Milnor Mathematics, 53, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-New York,
1968, xii+133 pp.
[1999, 2007, 2009].
[Connell, 1967] E. H. Connell, A topological H-
cobordism theorem for n 5, Illinois J. Math.
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Hatcher [1983] later proved the sharper result that the
inclusion SO(4) Diff + (S3 ) is a homotopy equivalence. [Hirsch, 1963] M. W. Hirsch, Obstruction theories for
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for n = 4, 5. No. 80. Princeton University Press,