Families of exotic affine 3-spheres

Abstract

We construct algebraic families of exotic affine 3-spheres, that is, smooth affine threefolds diffeomorphic to a non-degenerate smooth complex affine quadric of dimension 3 but non algebraically isomorphic to it. We show in particular that for every smooth topologically contractible affine surface S with trivial automorphism group, there exists a canonical smooth family of pairwise non isomorphic exotic affine 3-spheres parametrized by the closed points of S.