Surfaces in 4-manifolds and their mapping class groups

Abstract

A surface in a smooth 4-manifold is called flexible if, for any diffeomorphism $\varphi$ on the surface, there is a diffeomorphism on the 4-manifold whose restriction on the surface is $\varphi$ and which is isotopic to the identity. We investigate a sufficient condition for a smooth 4-manifold $M$ to include flexible knotted surfaces, and introduce a local operation in simply connected 4-manifolds for obtaining a flexible knotted surface from any knotted surface.