Lagrangian correspondences and Donaldson's TQFT construction of the Seiberg-Witten invariants of 3-manifolds (Q2441263)

From the author's introduction and abstract: In [Geom. Topol. Monogr. 2, 87--102 (1999; Zbl 0958.57031)], \textit{S. K. Donaldson} outlines a \(2+1\) topological quantum field theoretic construction of the Seiberg-Witten invariants of closed (oriented) 3-manifolds with \(b_1>0\). This construction is motivated from the expectation that the moduli space of finite energy monopoles on a 3-manifold with cylindrical ends provides an (immersed) Lagrangian correspondence between the vortex moduli spaces at infinity. From this expectation, by regarding the closed 3-manifold \(Y\) as a cobordism \(W\) with its two boundary components identified, and then decomposing \(W\) into a composite of cobordism, one can interpret the Seiberg-Witten invariants of \(Y\) as being obtained from the composite of the cyclic sequence of Lagrangian correspondences. In this paper, we supply the analytic details of these expectations\dots Using Morse-Bott techniques adapted to the gauge-theoretic setting, we show that the limiting boundary values of the space of finite energy monopoles on a connected 3-manifold with at least cylindrical ends provides an immersed Lagrangian submanifold of the vortex moduli space at infinity. By studying the signed intersections of such Lagrangians, we supply the analytic details of Donaldsion's TQFT construction of the Seiberg-Witten invariants of a closed 3-manifold.