4-dimensional analogues of Dehn's lemma

We investigate certain $4$-dimensional analogues of the classical $3$-dimensional Dehn's lemma, giving examples where such analogues do or do not hold, in the smooth and topological categories. In particular, we show that an essential $2$-sphere $S$ in the boundary of a simply connected $4$-manifold $W$ such that $S$ is null-homotopic in $W$ need not extend to an embedding of a ball in $W$. However, if $W$ is simply connected (or more generally a $4$-manifold with abelian fundamental group) with boundary a homology sphere, then $S$ bounds a topologically embedded ball in $W$. Moreover, we give examples where such an $S$ does not bound any smoothly embedded ball in $W$. In a similar vein, we construct incompressible tori $T\subseteq \partial W$ where $W$ is a contractible $4$-manifold such that $T$ extends to a map of a solid torus in $W$, but not to any embedding of a solid torus in $W$. Moreover, we construct an incompressible torus $T$ in the boundary of a contractible $4$-manifold $W$ such that $T$ extends to a topological embedding of a solid torus in $W$ but no smooth embedding. As an application of our results about tori, we address a question posed by Gompf about extending certain families of diffeomorphisms of $3$-manifolds which he has recently used to construct infinite corks.

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