Surfaces in 4-manifolds (Q1382761)

Let \(X\) be a simply-connected smooth 4-manifold; a surface \(\Sigma\) is said to be primitively embedded in \(X\) if \(\Sigma\) is smoothly embedded in \(X\) with \(\pi_1(X - \Sigma) = 0\). The first part of the present paper is devoted to construct, for each primitively embedded positive genus surface \(\Sigma\) in \(X\) and for each knot \(K\) in \(\mathbb{S}^3\), a smoothly embedded surface \(\Sigma_K\) in \(X\) representing the same homology class as \(\Sigma\) and so that a homeomorphism \((X,\Sigma)\to(X,\Sigma_K)\) exists. The construction of \(\Sigma_K\) is performed both via an extension of the method described in Fintushel and Stern [Knots, links, and 4-manifolds (1996 preprint)) and by a surgical operation -- which is called ``rim surgery'' -- on a particular homologically trivial torus in a neigborhood of \(\Sigma\). Further, the paper analyses the properties of rim surgery and its relationships with the Alexander polynomial, under suitable assumptions on the pair \((X,\Sigma)\) (involving the Seiberg-Witten invariant: see [\textit{E. Witten}, Math. Res. Lett. 1, No. 6, 769-796 (1994; Zbl 0867.57029)]); in particular, the authors prove the previous assumptions to hold in case \(\Sigma\) being a symplectically and primitively embedded surface with positive genus and nonnegative self-intersection in a simply connected symplectic 4-manifold \(X\).