Seiberg-Witten invariants and surface singularities: splicings and cyclic covers (Q857873)

The authors have conjectured a very general relation between the topology and the analytic invariants of a complex normal surface singularity \((X,0)\) whose link \(M\) is a rational homology sphere. When \((X,0)\) is a hypersurface in \((\mathbb{C}^3,0)\), given by \(g=0\), this conjecture says that the modified Seiberg-Witten invariant of \(M\) equals \(-\sigma(F)/8\), where \(\sigma(F)\) is the signature of the Milnor fiber of \(g\). In this paper the special, but highly non-trivial case of suspensions of irreducible plane curve singularities (i.e., \(g(x,y,z)=f(x,y)+z^n)\) is completely settled, giving a positive answer to the above conjecture. The paper has a rather long introduction, which provides an excellent overview of the part and present work done in this fascinating area.