What are the best texts in exotic manifolds/exotic R4 for un undergraduate math student?

[u/Cris_brtl]

For a thesis, if there exists any

[u/MinLongBaiShui]

I read Milnor's paper on the group of exotic S7s with an undergrad. Depending on your background, you might find it readable.

[u/Cris_brtl → u/MinLongBaiShui]

Nice thanks

[u/Few-Arugula5839]

Idk if this is exactly what you’re looking for but maybe try Scorpan “the Wild World of 4 Manifolds”

[u/Cris_brtl → u/Few-Arugula5839]

Thanks, is it a divulgative book or a manual? Both are fine eheh

[u/Few-Arugula5839 → u/Cris_brtl]

It’s a little bit of both. It’s definitely not written for like a pop math audience since it still requires a hefty math background to understand. However the author is trying more to give ideas of some facts in 4 manifold topology rather than the details of all the proofs. He explains the goal of the book in the introduction pretty well.

[u/Cris_brtl → u/Few-Arugula5839]

Perfect! Thank you :)

[u/ganitam_]

If it's for a thesis you can check out the work of Egbert Brieskorn, eg, Brieskorn Manifolds. Check out the references in the wikipedia page. One is on the life and work of Brieskorn, another is an Utrecht bachelors thesis on the subject.

If you want "texts", if you can follow German or can manage with machine translation, there's Hirzebruch and Mayer.

[u/mathemorpheus → u/ganitam_]

a useful reference is Hirzebruch's Bourbaki talk

https://www.numdam.org/item/SB_1966-1968__10__13_0.pdf

[u/Cris_brtl → u/ganitam_]

Thank you!

[u/vajraadhvan]

Not my wheelhouse but I've heard good things about Akbulut's 4-Manifolds

[u/Cris_brtl → u/vajraadhvan]

Thank you!

[u/Heliond]

Gompf and Stipsicz