Families of simply connected 4-manifolds with the same Seiberg--Witten invariants (Q1888454)

The authors construct new infinite families of smooth simply connected 4-manifolds such that any two manifolds in the same family are homeomorphic and they have the same Seiberg-Witten invariants. They give rise to an interesting question, i.e., whether or not they are diffeomorphic. By constructing families of homeomorphic simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds with one basic class with Seiberg-Witten invariant \(\pm 1\), i.e., \(SW = t_K \pm t_K^{-1}\), they show that this construction yields both families of manifolds homeomorphic to a simply connected complex surface as well as families of manifolds that are homeomorphic to no complex surface. Twisting this construction yields additional families whose Seiberg-Witten invariants have similar properties. Moreover, each manifold of the family has null homologous tori with the property that a \((-\frac{1}{m})\)-logarithmic transform on any of them multiplies the Seiberg-Witten invariant by \((m+1)\). Thus the families of homeomorphic simply connected \(4\)-manifolds have Seiberg-Witten invariants \((m+1)(t_K \pm t_K^{-1})\). If \(m \neq 0\), these manifolds are nonsymplectic. The authors conjecture that no two of these manifolds are diffeomorphic. Also by knot surgery on a simply connected elliptic surface \(X\), they build a family of examples which show that the Parshin-Arakelov theorem for holomorphic Lefschetz fibrations is false in symplectic manifolds, i.e., there are infinitely many genus \(g\geq 3\) Lefschetz fibrations on nondiffeomorphic \(4\)-manifolds, all homeomorphic to \(X\).