Families of four dimensional manifolds that become mutually diffeomorphic after one stabilization

Abstract

In this paper, we will introduce a cut and paste move, called a geometrically null log transform, and prove that any two manifolds related by a sequence of these moves become diffeomorphic afte r one stabilization. To motivate the cut and paste move, we will use the symplec tic fiber sum, and a construction of Fintushel and Stern to construct several large families of 4-manifolds. We will then proceed to prove that the members of any one of these families become diffeomorphic after one stabilization. Finally, we will compute the Seiberg-Witten invariants of each member of each of the families.