Mapping class groups of exotic tori and actions by ${\rm SL}_d(\mathbb Z)$

Abstract

We determine for which exotic tori $\mathcal{T}$ of dimension $d\neq4$ the homomorphism from the group of isotopy classes of orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of $\mathcal{T}$ to ${\rm SL}_d(\mathbb Z)$ given by the action on the first homology group is split surjective. As part of the proof we compute the mapping class group of all exotic tori $\mathcal{T}$ that are obtained from the standard torus by a connected sum with an exotic sphere. Moreover, we show that any nontrivial ${\rm SL}_d(\mathbb Z)$-action on $\mathcal{T}$ agrees on homology with the standard action, up to an automorphism of ${\rm SL}_d(\mathbb Z)$. When combined, these results in particular show that many exotic tori do not admit any nontrivial differentiable action by ${\rm SL}_d(\mathbb Z)$.