Combinatorial Heegaard Floer homology and sign assignments (Q2440857)

In the article [Adv. Math. 231, No. 1, 102--171 (2012; Zbl 1260.57051)], the authors constructed and proved the invariance of the stable Heegaard Floer homology over the field \(\mathbb{Z}/2{\mathbb{Z}}\) by using a purely combinatorial method. This article is an integral lift of that construction. Everything here is considered on nice Heegaard diagrams. The differential of the Heegaard Floer complex defined on a nice Heegaard diagram only counts bigons and rectangles. To lift the construction from \(\mathbb{Z}/2{\mathbb{Z}}\) to \(\mathbb{Z}\), one has to assign a sign to each bigon and rectangle. The authors introduce the set of formal flows \(\mathcal{F}_{n}\) of power \(n\) and provide the conditions that a sign assignment \(S\) for \(\mathcal{F}_{n}\) should satisfy. Note that two different bigons (or rectangles) may correspond to the same formal flow, so they will have the same sign assignment. In Section 5, the authors verify the existence of the sign assignment \(S: \mathcal{F}_{n}\to \{ \pm 1\}\) by a step-by-step construction. They also prove the uniqueness of \(S\) under gauge transformation. Section 4 of [\textit{C. Manolescu} et al., Geom. Topol. 11, 2339--2412 (2007; Zbl 1155.57030)] is an important reference in this part. In Section 4, the authors define the differential for the Heegaard Floer complex by involving the sign assignment. Precisely, if the generators \(\mathbf{x}\) and \(\mathbf{y}\) are connected by a bigon or rectangle \(\phi\), then \(S(F(\phi))\cdot \mathbf{y}\) contributes to \(\widetilde{\partial}_{\mathfrak{D}}^{\mathbb{Z}}(\mathbf{x})\). They then show that \((\widetilde{\partial}_{\mathfrak{D}}^{\mathbb{Z}})^{2}=0\), and the homology is independent of the choice of the sign assignment \(S\) and some other subtle choices. Furthermore, they prove that the homology is invariant under nice moves, which implies that it is a topological invariant of the 3-manifold.