Seiberg-Witten monopoles on Seifert fibered spaces (Q1389074)

The authors study extensively the Seiberg-Witten equation on three manifolds which admit Seifert fibered structures with non-zero degree \(\pi :Y\rightarrow \Sigma \). In the special case that the three manifold \(Y\) is the product of a Riemann surface and a circle, the Seiberg-Witten equation was studied in a paper by \textit{J. W. Morgan, Z. Szabó} and \textit{C. H. Taubes} [A product formula for Seiberg-Witten invariants and the generalized Thom conjecture, J. Differ. Geom. 44, 706-788 (1996)]. Via careful studies, the authors give a complete description of the moduli space of solutions in terms of flat connections on \(Y\) and effective divisors over \(\Sigma \). They also study gradient flow lines among different components of the moduli space. Using these, they determine the irreducible Seiberg-Witten-Floer homology groups where \(Y=\Sigma ( p,q,r) \) is a Brieskorn sphere with \(p,q\) and \(r\) being pairwise relatively prime integers. A new technique developed in this paper is the use of the Dirac operator coupled to a non-metric connection. This connection is chosen to be compatible with the Seifert fibered structure of \(Y\). This technique has been employed in Ozsváth and Szabó's proof of the symplectic Thom conjecture (preprint 1998).