Small exotic Stein manifolds

TL;DR

This paper constructs new simply connected exotic Stein 4-manifolds with arbitrary second Betti number by enlarging corks and plugs, expanding the known landscape of Stein fillings.

Contribution

It introduces a method to create exotic Stein 4-manifolds with any Betti number by enlarging corks and plugs, which was not previously known.

Findings

Constructed simply connected exotic Stein 4-manifolds for all b_2 ≥ 1

Demonstrated enlargement of corks and plugs as a technique

Expanded the class of known Stein fillings

Abstract

It is known that the only Stein filling of the standard contact structure on S^3 is B^4. In this paper, we construct simply connected exotic compact Stein 4-manifold pairs for any Betti number $b_2 \geq 1$; we do this by enlarging corks and plugs.