Smooth Structures on a Fake Real Projective Space

Abstract: We show that the group of smooth homotopy $7$-spheres acts freely on the set of smooth manifold structures on a topological manifold $M$ which is homotopy equivalent to the real projective $7$-space. We classify, up to diffeomorphism, all closed manifolds homeomorphic to the real projective $7$-space. We also show that $M$ has, up to diffeomorphism, exactly $28$ distinct differentiable structures with the same underlying PL structure of $M$ and $56$ distinct differentiable structures with the same underlying topological structure of $M$.