Monopoles and contact structures (Q1374774)

The authors adapt the construction of the Seiberg-Witten invariants to the situation of a connected oriented 4-manifold \(X\) with nonempty boundary \(\partial X\) which is equipped with an oriented contact structure (an oriented field of 2-planes). Then two important results on symplectic forms on \(X\) due to \textit{C. H. Taubes} [Math. Res. Lett. 1, 809-822 (1994; Zbl 0853.57019); ibid. 2, 9-13 (1995; Zbl 0854.57019)] are extended. A very delicate analysis for establishing the definitions and the properties of their invariants is done.