We construct a variant of Floer homology groups and prove a gluing formula for a variant of Donaldson invariants. As a corollary, the variant of Donaldson invariants is non-trivial for connected sums of 4-manifolds which satisfy a condition for Donaldson invariants. We also show a non-existence result of compact, spin 4-manifolds with boundary some homology 3-spheres and with certain intersection forms.
In a recent paper, Lin, Ruberman and Saveliev proved a splitting formula expressing the Seiberg-Witten invariant $λ_{SW}(X)$ of a smooth $4$-manifold with rational homology of $S^1\times S^3$ in terms of the Frøyshov invariant $h(X)$ and a Lefschetz number in reduced monopole Floer homology. In this note we observe that a similar splitting formula holds in reduced instanton Floer homology.
In this paper, we generalize the work of the second author and prove a grading shifting property, in sutured monopole and instanton Floer theories, for general balanced sutured manifolds. This result has a few consequences. First, we offer an algorithm that computes the Floer homologies of a family of sutured handle-bodies. Second, we obtain a canonical decomposition of sutured monopole and instanton Floer homologies and build polytopes for these two theories, which was initially achieved by Juhász for sutured (Heegaard) Floer homology. Third, we establish a Thurston-norm detection result for …
We prove an excision theorem for the singular instanton Floer homology that allows the excision surfaces to intersect the singular locus. This is an extension of the non-singular excision theorem by Kronheimer and Mrowka and the genus-zero singular excision theorem by Street. We use the singular excision theorem to define an instanton Floer homology theory for sutured manifolds with tangles. As applications, we prove that the annular Khovanov homology (1) detects the unlink, (2) detects the closure of the trivial braid, and (3) distinguishes braid closures from other links; we also prove that …
This paper establishes a new technique that enables us to access some fundamental structural properties of instanton Floer homology. As an application, we establish, for the first time, a relation between the instanton Floer homology of a $3$-manifold or a null-homologous knot inside a $3$-manifold and the Heegaard diagram of that $3$-manifold or knot. We further use this relation to compute the instanton knot homology of some families of $(1,1)$-knots, including all torus knots in $S^3$, which were mostly unknown before. As a second application, we also study the relation between the instanto…
We show that if $Y$ is the boundary of an almost-rational plumbing, then the framed instanton Floer homology $\smash{I^\#(Y)}$ is isomorphic to the Heegaard Floer homology $\smash{\widehat{\mathit{HF}}(Y; \mathbb{C})}$. This class of 3-manifolds includes all Seifert fibered rational homology spheres with base orbifold $S^2$ (we establish the isomorphism for the remaining Seifert fibered rational homology spheres$\unicode{x2014}$with base $\mathbb{RP}^2$$\unicode{x2014}$directly). Our proof utilizes lattice homology, and relies on a decomposition theorem for instanton Floer cobordism maps recen…
We unify two existing approaches to the tau invariants in instanton and monopole Floer theories, by identifying $τ_{\mathrm{G}}$, defined by the second author via the minus flavors $\underline{\operatorname{KHI}}^-$ and $\underline{\operatorname{KHM}}^-$ of the knot homologies, with $τ_{\mathrm{G}}^{\sharp}$, defined by Baldwin and Sivek via cobordism maps of the $3$-manifold homologies induced by knot surgeries. We exhibit several consequences, including a relationship with Heegaard Floer theory, and use our result to compute $\underline{\operatorname{KHI}}^-$ and $\underline{\operatorname{KH…
We calculate the equivariant instanton Floer homology, in the sense of Miller Eismeier, for the trivial $SO(3)$-bundle over the binary polyhedral spaces with coefficients in a PID $R$ for which $2\in R$ is invertible. Along the way we modify a part of the algebraic construction needed to define the equivariant instanton Floer groups.
Sutured instanton Floer homology was introduced by Kronheimer and Mrowka. In this paper, we prove that for a taut balanced sutured manifold with vanishing second homology, the dimension of the sutured instanton Floer homology provides a bound on the minimal depth of all possible taut foliations on that balanced sutured manifold. The same argument can be adapted to the monopole and even the Heegaard Floer settings, which gives a partial answer to one of Juhasz's conjectures. Using the nature of instanton Floer homology, on knot complements, we can construct a taut foliation with bounded depth, …
Khovanov-Floer theories are a class of homological link invariants which admit spectral sequences from Khovanov homology. They include Khovanov homology, Szab{ó}'s geometric link homology, singular instanton homology, and various Floer theories applied to branched double covers. In this short note we show that certain strong Khovanov-Floer theories, including Szab{ó} homology and singular instanton homology, are invariant under Conway mutation. This confirms conjectures of Seed and Lambert-Cole. Along the way we prove two other conjectures about the structure of Szab{ó} homology.
Suppose $(M, γ)$ is a balanced sutured manifold and $K$ is a rationally null-homologous knot in $M$. It is known that the rank of the sutured Floer homology of $M\backslash N(K)$ is at least twice the rank of the sutured Floer homology of $M$. This paper studies the properties of $K$ when the equality is achieved for instanton homology. As an application, we show that if $L\subset S^3$ is a fixed link and $K$ is a knot in the complement of $L$, then the instanton link Floer homology of $L\cup K$ achieves the minimum rank if and only if $K$ is the unknot in $S^3\backslash L$.
In this paper, we introduce the annular instanton Floer homology which is defined for links in a thickened annulus. It is an analogue of the annular Khovanov homology. A spectral sequence whose second page is the annular Khovanov homology and which converges to the annular instanton Floer homology is constructed. As an application of this spectral sequence, we prove that the annular Khovanov homology detects the unlink in the thickened annulus (assuming all the components are null-homologous). Another application is a new proof of Grigsby and Ni's result that tangle Khovanov homology distingui…
We outline Hutchings's prescription that produces an ECH analog of Latschev and Wendl's algebraic $k$-torsion in the context of $ech$, a variant of ECH used in a proof of the isomorphism between Heegaard Floer and Seiberg-Witten Floer homologies; and we explain how it translates into Heegaard Floer homology.
Given a connected cobordism between two knots in the 3-sphere, our main result is an inequality involving torsion orders of the knot Floer homology of the knots, and the number of local maxima and the genus of the cobordism. This has several topological applications: The torsion order gives lower bounds on the bridge index and the band-unlinking number of a knot, the fusion number of a ribbon knot, and the number of minima appearing in a slice disk of a knot. It also gives a lower bound on the number of bands appearing in a ribbon concordance between two knots. Our bounds on the bridge index a…
Since its inception, Floer homology has been an important tool in low-dimensional topology. Floer theoretic invariants of $3$-manifolds tend to be either gauge theoretic or symplecto-geometric in nature, and there is a general philosophy that each gauge theoretic Floer homology should have a corresponding symplectic Floer homology and vice-versa. In this article, we construct a Lagrangian Floer invariant for any closed, oriented $3$-manifold $Y$ (called the symplectic instanton homology of $Y$ and denoted $\mathrm{SI}(Y)$) which is conjecturally equivalent to a Floer homology defined using a c…
We proved that the dimension of the F-vector space J#(G) for a plane trivalent graph G, defined by Kronheimer and Mrowka using their SO(3) instanton Floer homology, is equal to the number of Tait colorings of G.
There have been a number of constructions of Lagrangian Floer homology invariants for $3$-manifolds defined in terms of symplectic character varieties arising from Heegaard splittings. With the aim of establishing an Atiyah-Floer counterpart of Kronheimer and Mrowka's singular instanton homology, we generalize one of these, due to H. Horton, to produce a Lagrangian Floer invariant of a knot or link $K \subset Y$ in a closed, oriented $3$-manifold, which we call symplectic instanton knot homology ($\mathrm{SIK}$). We use a multi-pointed Heegaard diagram to parametrize the gluing together of a p…
Surgery exact triangles in various 3-manifold Floer homology theories provide an important tool in studying and computing the relevant Floer homology groups. These exact triangles relate the invariants of 3-manifolds, obtained by three different Dehn surgeries on a fixed knot. In this paper, the behavior of $SU(N)$-instanton Floer homology with respect to Dehn surgery is studied. In particular, it is shown that there are surgery exact tetragons and pentagons, respectively, for $SU(3)$- and $SU(4)$-instanton Floer homologies. It is also conjectured that $SU(N)$-instanton Floer homology in gener…
We give a new, conceptually simpler proof of the fact that knots in $S^3$ with positive L-space surgeries are fibered and strongly quasipositive. Our motivation for doing so is that this new proof uses comparatively little Heegaard Floer-specific machinery and can thus be translated to other forms of Floer homology. We carried this out for instanton Floer homology in our recent article "Instantons and L-space surgeries", and used it to generalize Kronheimer and Mrowka's results on $SU(2)$ representations of fundamental groups of Dehn surgeries.
Suppose H is an admissible Heegaard diagram for a balanced sutured manifold (M,γ). We prove that the number of generators of the associated sutured Heegaard Floer complex is an upper bound on the dimension of the sutured instanton homology of (M,γ). It follows, in particular, that strong L-spaces are instanton L-spaces.
The singular instanton Floer homology was defined by Kronheimer and Mrowka in connection with their proof that the Khovanov homology is an unknot detector. We study this theory for knots and two-component links using equivariant gauge theory on their double branched covers. We show that the special generator in the singular instanton Floer homology of a knot is graded by the knot signature mod 4, thereby providing a purely topological way of fixing the absolute grading in the theory. Our approach also results in explicit computations of the generators and gradings of the singular instanton Flo…
We provide a unified framework for proving Reidemeister-invariance and functoriality for a wide range of link homology theories. These include Lee homology, Heegaard Floer homology of branched double covers, singular instanton homology, and \Szabo's geometric link homology theory. We follow Baldwin, Hedden, and Lobb (arXiv:1509.04691) in leveraging the relationships between these theories and Khovanov homology. We obtain stronger functoriality results by avoiding spectral sequences and instead showing that each theory factors through Bar-Natan's cobordism-theoretic link homology theory.
