Exotic rational elliptic surfaces without 1–handles

Abstract

Harer, Kas and Kirby have conjectured that every handle decomposition of the elliptic surface $E(1)_{2,3}$ requires both 1- and 3-handles. In this article, we construct a smooth 4-manifold which has the same Seiberg-Witten invariant as $E(1)_{2,3}$ and admits neither 1- nor 3-handles, by using rational blow-downs and Kirby calculus. Our manifold gives the first example of either a counterexample to the Harer-Kas-Kirby conjecture or a homeomorphic but non-diffeomorphic pair of simply connected closed smooth 4-manifolds with the same non-vanishing Seiberg-Witten invariants.