Rational surfaces and symplectic \(4\)-manifolds with one basic class (Q1597787)

This paper gives constructions of simply connected symplectic four-manifolds which have (up to sign) one basic class and which satisfy \(0<\chi(X)-3\leq c_{1}^{2} (X) \leq 2\chi(X)-6\), where \(\chi(X)=(e(X)+\text{sign}(X))/4\) is the holomorphic Euler characteristic of \(X\), \(e(X)\) the Euler characteristic and \(\text{sign}(X)\) the signature. This fills in the region between the half-Noether and Noether lines. The construction is based on a suitable fiber connected sum of two rational surfaces which contain configurations of curves \(C_{n}\) which may be rationally blowdown. Such configuration contains a collection of \(2\)-spheres \(S_{0},\ldots, S_{n-2}\) such that \(S_{0}^{2}=-(n+2)\), \(S_{j}^{2}=-2\) for \(j>0\) and \(S_{j} \cdot S_{j+1}=1\). The key result on which the computation of the Seiberg-Witten classes of the constructed four-manifolds is based [\textit{R. Fintushel} and \textit{R. J. Stern}, J. Differ. Geom. 46, No. 2, 181-235 (1997; Zbl 0896.57022)] establishes that the process of rational blowdown kills most of the basic classes.