Model and Set-Theoretic Aspects of Exotic Smoothness Structures on R4

Abstract

Model-theoretic aspects of exotic smoothness were studied long ago uncovering unexpected relations to noncommutative spaces and quantum theory. Some of these relations were worked out in detail in later work. An important point in the argumentation was the forcing construction of Cohen but without a direct application to exotic smoothness. In this article we assign the set-theoretic forcing on trees to Casson handles and characterize small exotic smooth R4 from this point of view. Moreover, we show how models in some Grothendieck toposes can help describing such differential structures in dimension 4. These results can be used to obtain the deformation of the algebra of usual complex functions to the noncommutative algebra of operators on a Hilbert space. We also discuss the results in the context of the Epstein-Glaser renormalization in QFT.