A survey of group actions on 4-manifolds

Allan L. Edmonds

Published 2009-07-02, updated 2016-02-16Version 2

Over 50 years of work on group actions on $4$-manifolds, from the 1960's to the present, from knotted fixed point sets to Seiberg-Witten invariants, is surveyed. Locally linear actions are emphasized, but differentiable and purely topological actions are also discussed. The presentation is organized around some of the fundamental general questions that have driven the subject of compact transformation groups over the years and their interpretations in the case of $4$-manifolds. Many open problems are formulated. Updates to previous problems sets are given. A substantial bibliography is included.