Holomorphic triangles and invariants for smooth four-manifolds (Q2496240)

The authors introduce invariants of oriented, smooth 4-manifolds, built using the Heegaard Floer homology groups. These invariants are constructed by topological ingredients without gauge theoretical ingredients, however the invariants have basic properties analogue to the gauge theoretic invariants of closed smooth 4-manifolds. They construct the invariant of a connected cobordism \(W\) between two connected 3-manifolds \(Y_1\) and \(Y_2\), defined using the holomorphic triangle construction, a spin\(^c\) structure and a handle-decomposition of \(W\). These constructions yield a chain map between the chain complexes from \(Y_1\) to \(Y_2\), whose induced maps on homology are invariants of the cobordism \(W\). The maps satisfy duality, conjugation invariance, a blow-up formula, and composition properties. Also, they construct an absolute \(\mathbb{Q}\)-lift of the relative \(\mathbb{Z}\)-gradings of the Floer homology groups for a 3-manifold equipped with a torsion spin\(^c\) structure, and induce the relationship between the cobordism invariant and the absolute grading. Let \(W\) be a cobordism with \(b_2 ^+(W) > 1\) and cut \(W\) along a 3-manifold \(N\) to divide it into two cobordisms \(W_1\) and \(W_2\) with \(b_2 ^+ (W_i) > 0\), \(i=1,2\). Using the isomorphism of the reduced Floer homology groups \(\mathrm{HF}^+ _{\mathrm{red}} (N,t) \cong \mathrm{HF}^- _{\mathrm{red}} (N, t)\), they construct the mixed invariant as a map \(\mathrm{F}^{\mathrm{mix}} _{W,s} : \mathrm{HF}^- (Y_1, t_1) \rightarrow \mathrm{HF}^+ (Y_2, t_2)\), where \(s,t\) and \(t_{i}\), \(i=1,2\) are the spin\(^{c}\) structures of corresponding spaces. By elaborating the mixed invariant construction, they get a map \[ \Phi _{X,s} : \mathbb{Z}[\text{U}] \otimes \Lambda^{\ast}(\mathrm{H}_1 (X; \mathbb{Z}) / \mathrm{Tors} ) \rightarrow \mathbb{Z}, \] which is a homogeneous polynomial of degree \(d(s)=\frac{1}{4} [ c_1 (s)^2-(2 \chi(X) + 3\sigma(X))]\), where \(X\) is a closed 4-manifold with \(b^+ _2 (X) > 0\), \(s\) is a spin\(^{c}\) structure of \(X\). The invariant \(\Phi\) gives more directly topological gauge-theory free proofs of some facts about smooth 4-manifolds which have been previously established by means of Donaldson polynomials and Seiberg-Witten invariants. They conjecture that the invariant \(\Phi _{X,s}\) agrees with the Seiberg-Witten invariant for \(X\) in the spin\(^{c}\) structure \(s\). They prove that the invariants \(\Phi_{X, s}\) for the connected sum \(X=X_1\#X_2\) with \(b^+_2(X_i)>0\), \(i=1,2\), vanish for all spin\(^c\) structures \(s\) of \(X\), also the blow-up formula, for \(b^+_2(X)>1,\) \(\widehat{X} = X \# \overline{\mathbb{CP}}^2, \quad \widehat{s} \in \mathrm{spin}^c(\widehat{X}), d(\widehat{X}, \widehat{s}) \geq 0, \Phi _{\widehat{X}, \widehat{s}} ( \text{U}^{\frac{l(l+1)}{2}} \cdot \xi ) = \Phi _{X,s} (\xi)\) where \(\langle c_1(\widehat{s}), E\rangle = \pm(2l+1)\) and \(E\) is the exceptional sphere in \(\widehat{X}\), and the following adjunction inequalities: Let \(\Sigma \subset X\) be a homologically non-trivial embedded surface with genus \(g \geq 1\) and with non-negative self-intersection number. Then, for each spin\(^c\) structure \(s \in \mathrm{spin}^c(X)\) for which \(\Phi_{X,S} \neq 0\), they have that \(\langle c_1(s), \Sigma\rangle+\Sigma \cdot \Sigma \leq 2g-2.\)