Equivariant Casson invariants and links of singularities (Q1868205)

This article is a survey of the authors' work concerning the Casson invariant and Floer homology of links of singularities and more generally, of graph homology spheres. The survey is well written and will be useful for everybody interested in the subject. In the first section the authors discuss the gauge theoretic aspects of Casson's invariant. Moreover, they summarize the main results of their common work about the equivariant Casson invariant (see [\textit{O. Collin} and \textit{N. Saveliev}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 541, 143-169 (2001; Zbl 0989.57013)]). The second section deals with links of singularities and the Neumann-Wahl Conjecture (see [\textit{W. Neumann} and \textit{J. Wahl}, Comment. Math. Helv. 65, 58-78 (1990; Zbl 0704.57007)]). The authors verify the conjecture in some special cases using the equivariant Casson invariant. Most of this was shown before by Fintushel and Stern [\textit{R. Fintushel} and \textit{R. J. Stern}, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc., III. Ser., 61, 109-137 (1990; Zbl 0705.57009)] and Neumann and Wahl. Nevertheless, the approach using the equivariant Casson invariant seems to be more conceptual. In the third section the authors study graph homology spheres endowed with an involution representing them as double branched covers of the 3-dimensional sphere with branch set being a Montesinos knot. They give an explicit formula for the equivariant Casson invariant of such 3-manifolds in terms of the \(\bar\mu\)-invariant of Neumann and Siebenmann and also in terms of Floer homology.