Abstract |
The stable Andrews-Curtis conjecture in combinatorial group theory is
the statement that every balanced presentation of the trivial group
can be simplified to the trivial form by elementary moves corresponding to
"handle-slides" together with "stabilization" moves. Schoenflies conjecture
is the statement that the complement of any smooth embedding
of S3 into S4 is a pair of smooth balls.
Here we suggest an approach to these problems by a cork twisting operation
on contractible manifolds, and demonstrate it on the example of the first
Cappell-Shaneson homotopy sphere.
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