A universal constraint for Donaldson invariants (Q1203630)

The moduli spaces of instanton connections over a compact, oriented Riemannian 4-manifold define invariants of the differentiable structure on the 4-manifold. For a simply connected 4-manifold \(X\) whose intersection form has signature \((b^ +,b^ -)\), with \(b^ +>1\) and odd, the invariants are multilinear symmetric functions \(\Psi_ k\) on the homology \(H_ 2(X;\mathbb{Z})\). The index \(k\) can take any value which is sufficiently large compared with \(b^ +\), and \(\Psi_ k\) has degree \(d(k)=4k-3(1+b^ +)/2\). There is a standard product \((\varphi,\psi)\mapsto \varphi \circ \psi\) on such multilinear functions: \[ \varphi \circ \psi (x_ 1,\ldots,x_{p+q})=\sum_{i_ 1<\cdots<i_ p} \varphi(x_{i_ 1}, \ldots,x_{i_ p})\psi(x_ 1,\ldots, \widehat{x_{i_ 1}},\ldots,\widehat{x_{i_ p}},\ldots ,x_{p+q}). \] The first result of this paper is that if the 4-manifold is spin and \(k\) is odd, then the reduction modulo 2 of the invariants satisfies \[ q \circ \Psi_ k=0, \] where \(q\) is the intersection form of \(X\) (a symmetric function of degree 2). The author shows secondly that, as a purely algebraic consequence, when \(d(k)\) is even, the reduction modulo 2 of \(\Psi_ k\) can be written as \[ \Psi_ k=q \circ \Theta_ k \] where \(\Theta_ k\) has degree \(d(k)-2\). The proof of the first result goes back to the definition of the invariants \(\Psi_ k\). The moduli space \(M_ k\) of instantons with Chern class \(k\) has dimension \(2d(k)\) and, if \(\alpha_ i\) are classes in \(H_ 2(X)\), for \(i=1,\ldots, d(k)\), then \(\Psi_ k( \alpha_ 1,\ldots,\alpha_{d(k)})\), modulo 2, can be defined by counting the intersection of \(M_ k\) with \(d(k)\) codimension-2 subsets \(V_ i\) associated to surfaces \(\Sigma_ i\) in \(X\) representing \(\alpha_ i\). The author considers the intersection of \(M_{k+ 1}\) with \(d(k)+2\) such sets \(V_ i\). This gives a 4-dimensional manifold \(N\) which is not compact, in general. Results on the compactness properties of the moduli spaces show that the ends of \(N\) can be associated with pairs \((A,x)\) where \(x\) is an intersection point in \(X\) of two of the surfaces \(\Sigma_ i\), and \(A\) is a point in \(M_ k\) which lies in the intersection of the \(V_ i\) for all \(d(k)\) remaining indices \(i\). It follows that the number of ends of \(N\) is, modulo 2, precisely the value assigned to \(\alpha_ 1,\ldots,\alpha_{d+2}\) by the function \(q \circ \Psi_ k\). Now each end of \(N\) is shown to have the form of the product of \(SO(3)\) with a half-line, and the result follows by exhibiting a 3- dimensional cohomology class (with coefficients in \(\mathbb{Z}/2)\) over the moduli space which takes value 1 on each of these copies of \(SO(3)\) in the ends. The cohomology class is constructed using the index of the Dirac family defined by connections, and the spin structure on \(X\). The second result, the algebraic corollary, is deduced from an analysis of the algebra of symmetric forms on an \(n\)-dimensional space over \(\mathbb{Z}/2\). The theory is quite similar to that of the exterior algebra of a symplectic vector space, in characteristic zero. The author shows that the operation \(L\) of multiplication by the intersection form \(q\) makes the symmetric algebra into a chain complex. There is a ``contraction'' operator \(\Lambda\) which lowers degree by 2. The identity \([L,\Lambda]=n+p\) on forms of degree \(p\) implies that alternate homology groups of this chain complex vanish, and this leads to the result.