Equivariant Seiberg-Witten Floer homology (Q1848434)

In this almost 200 pages long paper, a detailed and thorough exposition of the construction of a \(U(1)\)-equivariant version of Seiberg-Witten-Floer homology for a \(3\)-manifold \(Y\) is carried out. This equivariant Seiberg-Witten-Floer homology is invariant under the choice of metric and perturbation. The (equivariant) Seiberg-Witten-Floer complex is constructed by taking the vector space generated by the equivariant complex associated to solutions to the \(3\)-dimensional SW equations on \(Y\) (this yields a copy of \(\mathbf{R}[\Omega]\) in the case of a reducible solution, where \(\Omega\) has degree \(2\)). The boundary operator is defined by counting the points of the (based) moduli space of SW monopoles on \(Y\times\mathbf{R}\) decaying exponentially at the ends. This paper carries out a very detailed analysis of the boundary structure of the monopole moduli spaces, compactified to give a smooth manifold with corners, by adding ``broken monopoles''. Independence of metric and perturbation follows from studying the moduli spaces of SW monopoles for a varying metric \(g_{t}\) on \(Y\). The gluing of broken monopoles in this case presents an obstruction bundle. Special care must be taken when the pair given by the metric and perturbation crosses a wall (in the case \(b_{1}(Y)=0\)) determined by the condition of the Dirac operator having a non-trivial kernel. When \(b_{1}(Y)>0\) and the spin\(^{c}\) structure is non-torsion, the equivariant Seiberg-Witten-Floer homology is isomorphic to the non-equivariant version. In the case \(b_{1}(Y)=0\), there is an exact sequence of the form \[ \cdots\to \mathbf{R}[\Omega] \to HFSW_{*,U(1)}(Y) \to HFSW_{*}(Y) \to \mathbf{R}[\Omega] \to \cdots \] where the last map is of degree \(-1\). This is used to obtain a wall-crossing formula for the Casson invariant (i.e., the Euler characteristic of the non-equivariant Seiberg-Witten-Floer homology).