Seiberg-Witten equations on three-manifolds with Euclidean ends (Q2580230)

Before Seiberg-Witten theory and after the introduction of the Donaldson invariants, gauge theory papers were long and technical. Even though the underlying ideas were elegant it took work to nail down all of the technical details. For a short while after the introduction of Seiberg-Witten theory gauge theory papers became short, then there was a period when papers were written with the phrase, ``a modification of standard arguments from Donaldson theory shows\dots''. Now we are back to the point where a number of gauge theory papers need to be long and technical. This present paper is fairly long and technical. It is also very well motivated and well written. A three-manifold with Euclidean ends is topologically just the complement of a finite set of points is a closed \(3\)-manifold. Geometrically the ends of such a \(3\)-manifold must be isometric to the complement of a compact subset of \(\mathbb{R}^3\). The author studies perturbed Seiberg-Witten solutions on \(3\)-manifolds with Euclidean ends. Below are some of the motivations she gives for this study. First, this is a \(3\)-dimensional version of C. Taubes' program for comparing Seiberg-Witten invariants to generalized Gromov-Witten invariants arising from \(2\)-forms which degenerate along circles. The second motivation is that it gives a natural geometric approach to the proof of the equivalence of the 3D Seiberg-Witten invariant and the Milnor torsion that should generalize to Floer theory. Third, a twist of these ideas may lead to a proof of the equivalence between Ozsváth-Szabó theory and Seiberg-Witten theory. The fourth motivation goes back to a little studied idea from Yang-Mills gauge theory -- the monopole invariants defined on \(3\)-manifolds with Euclidean ends. A final motivation that this reviewer can give is that this might lead to a bridge between Seiberg-Witten theory and contact homology.