A surgery triangle for lattice cohomology (Q1941813)

The author proves a surgery exact triangle for the lattice cohomology of a negative definite plumbed manifold analogous to the one for the Heegaard Floer homology. Given a finite planar graph \(G = (V,E)\) with an integer weight \(m(v)\) for each vertex \(v \in V\) and a sign for each edge \(e \in E\), one can associate a compact \(4\)-manifold \(X(G)\) with boundary \(Y(G) = \partial X(G)\). The graph \(G\) defines a free \({\mathbb Z}\)-module \(L = L(G)\) which is freely generated by classes \(E_v\) for \(v \in V\), and there is a symmetric bilinear form \((\cdot,\cdot)\) defined on \(L(G)\) by setting \((E_v,E_w)\) equal to the signed number of edges between \(v\) and \(w\) when \(v \neq w\) and \((E_v,E_v) = m(v)\). Definition 1.1. A graph \(G\) is \textit{negative definite} if it is acyclic and the pairing \((\cdot, \cdot)\) is negative definite, and the resulting space \(Y(G)\) is a \textit{negative definite plumbed manifold}. Ozsváth and Szabó determined an algorithm for computing the Heegaard Floer homology \(HF^+\) of a negative definite plumbed manifold under an additional assumption on the graph \(G\) [\textit{P. Ozsváth} and \textit{Z. Szabó}, Geom. Topol. 7, 185--224 (2003; Zbl 1130.57302)], and Némethi proposed the lattice cohomology \({\mathbb H}^+(Y)\) as an invariant which would generalize Ozsváth and Szabó's algorithm to any negative definite plumbed \(3\)-manifold [\textit{A. Némethi}, Publ. Res. Inst. Math. Sci. 44, No. 2, 507--543 (2008; Zbl 1149.14029)]. One key technical tool for the Heegaard Floer homology groups is a surgery exact triangle that they obey for any framed knot \(K \subset Y\). The main result in the paper under review proves that there is an analogous surgery exact triangle for the lattice cohomology groups over \({\mathbb Z}/2{\mathbb Z}\). At the end of the introduction there is an update which states that Némethi reproved the main result over \(\mathbb{Z}\), and Ozsváth, Stipsicz, and Szabó also reproved the main result and used it to establish a spectral sequence relating \({\mathbb H}^+\) with \(HF^+\).