Minimal genus in 4-manifolds with a free circle action (Q2445388)

For a \(3\)-manifold \(N\) and \(\sigma \in H_2(N)\), in [Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 339, 99--130 (1986; Zbl 0585.57006)] \textit{W.~P.~Thurston} defined the norm \(\| \sigma\|_T=\min\{-\chi(\Sigma)\}\) for all embedded in \(N\) surfaces \(\Sigma\) whose fundamental class is \(\sigma\) and \(\chi(\Sigma)=2g(\Sigma)-2\) for surfaces of positive genus. It was shown that \(\|\sigma\|_T \geq \kappa\cdot\sigma\) for any Seiberg-Witten monopole class \(\kappa\) with the sharp inequality for irreducible 3-manifolds. A similar important problem in \(4\)-dimensional topology is to determine the minimal genus of an embedded surface which represents a given homology class. A powerful tool is the adjunction inequality \(\chi(\Sigma) \geq \sigma \cdot \sigma+\kappa \cdot \sigma\). For a compact surface \(\Sigma\) with connected components \(\Sigma_1,\dots,\Sigma_l\) the complexity \(\chi{\_}(\Sigma)\) of \(\Sigma\) is defined as \(\chi{\_}(\Sigma)=\sum\limits_{i=1}^l\max\{-\chi(\Sigma_i),0\}\). For a \(4\)-manifold \(M\) and a class \(\alpha\in H_2(M)\) let \(x(\alpha)=\min\{\chi{\_}(\Sigma)\}\) for all embedded in \(M\) surfaces whose fundamental class is \(\alpha\). The problem is to determine \(x\) for a \(4\)-manifold \(M\). In this paper the authors use Seiberg-Witten theory to produce new adjunction inequalities for non-connected embedded surfaces in \(4\)-manifolds which are circle bundles over a \(3\)-manifold. They show that if \(N\) is an irreducible \(3\)-manifold which is not a graph manifold that does not admit a metric of non-positive curvature, and \(p\:M\to N\) is the circle bundle with \(e\in H^2(N)\setminus\Xi_N\), then \(x(\alpha)\geq |\alpha\cdot\alpha|+\| p_*\alpha\|_T\) for any \(\alpha\in H_2(M)\), where \(\Xi_N\) is a finite subset determined by Thurston norm of \(N\). Furthermore, they find examples of \(3\)-manifolds for which the equality is attained.