A higher dimensional foliated Donaldson theory. I. (Q2515528)

Donaldson theory has been a remarkable tool for the study of smooth \(4\)-manifolds. There have been a number of proposals to generalize this theory to higher-dimensional settings. The analogous exotic behavior does not exist in higher-dimensional smooth manifolds, so the right place to look is manifolds with additional structure. In this paper, Wang builds the foundations for a generalization of Donaldson theory to manifolds with codimension-\(4\) Riemannian foliation. In particular, after a nice review of foliation theory, he develops a suitable pertubation theory and a Fredholm theory for the foliated case. The main result is a compactification of the relevant moduli spaces. In place of ideal connections that include a finite configuration of points representing the location of bubbling, ideal connections in this setting have to include a rectifiable foliation current with support a finite collection of compact leaves.