Noncompact Taubes projection (Q1907407)

The author studies asd-connections (with structure group SU(2)) on a connected sum of two homology-3-spheres \(\Sigma_i\) cross the real line \(\mathbb{R}\). He thinks of this space as the ``connected sum'' of \(\Sigma_i \times \mathbb{R}\) along \(S^2 \times \mathbb{R}\). Therefore he views his gluing technique as a noncompact analog of Taubes' projection for ordinary connected sums of closed 4-manifolds. The main theorem states that any asd-connection on \(\Sigma_1 \# \Sigma_2 \times \mathbb{R}\) may be represented in a certain standard form which reflects the connected sum decomposition on the level of connections. It should be remarked that the translation is very poor, e.g. one has to fill in the phrase `there exist' somewhere in the main theorem. Moreover, a `connectivity' is a connection, a `stratification' is a vector bundle, a `general metric' is a generic metric, etc.