Superconformal simple type and Witten's conjecture (Q2326680)

The authors continue their research line developed in several papers (see the bibliography in this paper). See also the related paper by the same authors [Adv. Math. 356, Article ID 106821, 35 p. (2019; Zbl 07115940)]. Let \(X\) be a smooth, closed, connected orientable four-manifold with \(b^1 (X) = 0\) and \(b^+ (X) = 2 m + 1 \) with \(m\) integer and \(m \ge 1\), i.e., let \(X\) be \textit{standard}. The notion of \textit{superconformal simple type} was defined in [\textit{M. Mariño} et al., Math. Res. Lett. 6, No. 3--4, 429--437 (1999; Zbl 0974.57018); Commun. Math. Phys. 205, No. 3, 691--735 (1999; Zbl 0988.57019)]. The \textit{Witten conjecture} states that if the four-manifold \(X\) has Seiberg-Witten simple type, then \(X\) has Kronheimer-Mrowka simple type, the Seiberg-Witten and Kronheimer-Mrowka basic classes coincide, and for any \(\omega \in H2 (X,\mathbb{Z})\) and \(h \in H_2 (X,\mathbb{R})\) the Donaldson invariants satisfy \[ D_X^w (h)=2^{2 - \chi_h - c_12} \, \exp [{Q_X (h)/2}] \ \sum (-1)^{(1/2)(w2 + c_1 (s) w)} \ S W_X (s) \, \exp [ { \langle c_1 (s), h \rangle } ] \] where the sum is over \(s \in \mathrm{Spin}^c (X)\). The main result in this paper is the following theorem: Let \(X\) be a standard four-manifold that has superconformal simple type. Then the \(\mathrm{SO}(3)\) monopole cobordism formula implies that \(X\) satisfies Witten conjecture. Here the \(\mathrm{SO}(3)\) cobordism formula [\textit{P. M. N. Feehan} and \textit{T. G. Leness}, An \(\mathrm{SO}(3)\)-monopole cobordism formula relating Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten invariants. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS) (2018; Zbl 07000313)], given as Theorem 3.2 in the paper, depends on the following hypothesis: The local gluing map, defined in a previous work by the authors [``\(\mathrm{PU}(2)\) monopoles. III: Existence of gluing and obstruction maps'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:math/9907107}], gives a continuous parametrization of a neighborhood of \(M_s \times \Sigma\) in \(\widetilde{\mathcal{M}}_t\) for each smooth stratum \(\Sigma \subset \mathrm{Sym}^\ell (X)\). Thus the main theorem mentioned above has the following corollary: If \(X\) is a standard four-manifold of Seiberg-Witten simple type and the hypothesis above is assumed, then \(X\) satisfies the Witten conjecture.