EXOTIC SPHERES and CURVATURE 1. Introduction Exotic
BULLETIN (New Series) OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY Volume 45, Number 4, October 2008, Pages 595–616 S 0273-0979(08)01213-5 Article electronically published on July 1, 2008 EXOTIC SPHERES AND CURVATURE M. JOACHIM AND D. J. WRAITH Abstract. Since their discovery by Milnor in 1956, exotic spheres have pro- vided a fascinating object of study for geometers. In this article we survey what is known about the curvature of exotic spheres. 1. Introduction Exotic spheres are manifolds which are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to a standard sphere. In this introduction our aims are twofold: First, to give a brief account of the discovery of exotic spheres and to make some general remarks about the structure of these objects as smooth manifolds. Second, to outline the basics of curvature for Riemannian manifolds which we will need later on. In subsequent sections, we will explore the interaction between topology and geometry for exotic spheres. We will use the term differentiable to mean differentiable of class C∞,and all diffeomorphisms will be assumed to be smooth. As every graduate student knows, a smooth manifold is a topological manifold that is equipped with a smooth (differentiable) structure, that is, a smooth maximal atlas. Recall that an atlas is a collection of charts (homeomorphisms from open neighbourhoods in the manifold onto open subsets of some Euclidean space), the domains of which cover the manifold. Where the chart domains overlap, we impose a smooth compatibility condition for the charts [doC, chapter 0] if we wish our manifold to be smooth. Such an atlas can then be extended to a maximal smooth atlas by including all possible charts which satisfy the compatibility condition with the original maps.
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