Our main result gives an adjunction inequality for embedded surfaces in certain $4$-manifolds with contact boundary under a non-vanishing assumption on the Bauer--Furuta type invariants. Using this, we give infinitely many knots in $S^3$ that are not smoothly H-slice (that is, bounding a null-homologous disk) in many $4$-manifolds but they are topologically H-slice. In particular, we give such knots in the boundaries of the punctured elliptic surfaces $E(2n)$. In addition, we give obstructions to codimension-0 orientation-reversing embedding of weak symplectic fillings with $b_3=0$ into closed symplectic 4-manifolds with $b_1=0$ and $b_2^+\equiv 3$ mod $4$. From here we prove a Bennequin type inequality for symplectic caps of $(S^3,ξ_{std})$. We also show that any weakly symplectically fillable $3$-manifold bounds a $4$-manifold with at least two smooth structures.
S.Bauer and M.Furuta defined a stable cohomotopy refinement of the Seiberg-Witten invariants. In this paper, we prove a vanishing theorem of Bauer-Furuta invariants for 4-manifolds with smooth Z/2-actions. As an application, we give a constraint on smooth Z/2-actions on homotopy K3#K3, and construct a nonsmoothable locally linear Z/2-action on K3#K3. We also construct a nonsmoothable locally linear Z/2-action on $K3$.
The Bauer-Furuta invariants of smooth 4-manifolds are investigated from a functorial point of view. This leads to a definition of equivariant Bauer-Furuta invariants for compact Lie group actions. These are studied in Galois covering situations. We show that the ordinary invariants of all quotients are determined by the equivariant invariants of the covering manifold. In the case where the Bauer-Furuta invariants can be identified with the Seiberg-Witten invariants, this implies relations between the invariants in Galois covering situations, and these can be illustrated through elliptic surfac…
We establish the existence of a pair of exotic surfaces in a punctured $K3$ which remains exotic after one external stabilization and have diffeomorphic complements. A key ingredient in the proof is a vanishing theorem of the family Bauer--Furuta invariant for diffeomorphisms on a large family of spin 4-manifolds, which is proved using the tom Dieck splitting theorem in equivariant stable homotopy theory. In particular, we prove that the $S^{1}$-equivariant family Bauer--Furuta invariant of any orientation-preserving diffeomorphism on $S^{4}$ is trivial and that the $\mathrm{Pin}(2)$-equivaria…
In this paper, we study Manolescu's construction of the relative Bauer-Furuta invariants arising from the Seiberg-Witten equations on 4-manifolds with boundary. The main goal is to introduce a new gauge fixing condition in order to apply the finite dimensional approximation technique. We also hope to provide a framework to extend Manolescu's construction to general 4-manifolds.
Kronheimer and Mrowka constructed a variant of Seiberg-Witten invariants for a 4-manifold $X$ with contact boundary in 1997. Using Furuta's finite dimensional approximation, we refine this invariant in the case $H^1(X, \partial X; \mathbb{R})=0$.
In a previous paper we have constructed an invariant of four-dimensional manifolds with boundary in the form of an element in the stable homotopy group of the Seiberg-Witten Floer spectrum of the boundary. Here we prove that when one glues two four-manifolds along their boundaries, the Bauer-Furuta invariant of the resulting manifold is obtained by applying a natural pairing to the invariants of the pieces. As an application, we show that the connected sum of three copies of the K3 surface contains no exotic nuclei. In the process we also compute the Floer spectrum for several Seifert fibratio…
We obtain constraints on the topology of families of smooth $4$-manifolds arising from a finite dimensional approximation of the families Seiberg-Witten monopole map. Amongst other results these constraints include a families generalisation of Donaldson's diagonalisation theorem and Furuta's $10/8$ theorem. As an application we construct examples of continuous $\mathbb{Z}_p$-actions for any odd prime $p$, which can not be realised smoothly. As a second application we show that the inclusion of the group of diffeomorphisms into the group of homeomorphisms is not a weak homotopy equivalence for …
We give a generalized Thurston--Bennequin-type inequality for links in $S^3$ using a Bauer--Furuta-type invariant for 4-manifolds with contact boundary. As a special case, we also give an adjunction inequality for smoothly embedded orientable surfaces with negative intersection in a closed oriented smooth 4-manifold whose non-equivariant Bauer--Furuta invariant is non-zero.
We show how the families Seiberg-Witten invariants of a family of smooth $4$-manifolds can be recovered from the families Bauer-Furuta invariant via a cohomological formula. We use this formula to deduce several properties of the families Seiberg-Witten invariants. We give a formula for the Steenrod squares of the families Seiberg-Witten invariants leading to a series of mod $2$ relations between these invariants and the Chern classes of the spin$^c$ index bundle of the family. As a result we discover a new aspect of the ordinary Seiberg-Witten invariants of a $4$-manifold $X$: they obstruct t…
A localisation of the category of n-manifolds is introduced by formally inverting the connected sum construction with a chosen n-manifold Y. On the level of automorphism groups, this leads to the stable diffeomorphism groups of n-manifolds. In dimensions 0 and 2, this is connected to the stable homotopy groups of spheres and the stable mapping class groups of Riemann surfaces. In dimension 4 there are many essentially different candidates for the n-manifold Y to choose from. It is shown that the Bauer--Furuta invariants provide invariants in the case Y = CP^2, which is related to the birationa…
The purpose of these notes is to show that the methods introduced by Bauer and Furuta in order to refine the Seiberg-Witten invariants of smooth 4-dimensional manifolds can also be used to obtain stable homotopy classes from Riemann surfaces, using the vortex equations on the latter.
Families of smooth closed oriented 4-manifolds with a complex spin structure are studied by means of a family version of the Bauer--Furuta invariants in the context of parametrised stable homotopy theory, leading to a definition of characteristic cohomotopy classes on Thom spectra associated to the classifying spaces of their complex spin diffeomorphism groups. This is illustrated with mapping tori of such diffeomorphisms and related to the equivariant invariants.
Using Furuta's idea of finite dimensional approximation in Seiberg-Witten theory, we refine Seiberg-Witten Floer homology to obtain an invariant of homology 3-spheres which lives in the S^1-equivariant graded suspension category. In particular, this gives a construction of Seiberg-Witten Floer homology that avoids the delicate transversality problems in the standard approach. We also define a relative invariant of four-manifolds with boundary which generalizes the Bauer-Furuta stable homotopy invariant of closed four-manifolds.
We consider several differential-topological invariants of compact 4-manifolds which directly arise from Riemannian variational problems. Using recent results of Bauer and Furuta, we compute these invariants in many cases that were previously intractable. In particular, we are now able to calculate the Yamabe invariant for certain connected sums of complex surfaces.
We show that there exist smooth, simply connected, four-dimensional spin manifolds which do not admit Einstein metrics, but nonetheless satisfy the strict Hitchin-Thorpe inequality. Our construction makes use of the Bauer/Furuta cohomotopy refinement of the Seiberg-Witten invariant, in conjunction with curvature estimates previously proved by the second author. These methods also easily allow one to construct examples of topological 4-manifolds which admit an Einstein metric for one smooth structure, but which have infinitely many other smooth structures for which no Einstein metric can exist.
Starting from ideas of Furuta, we develop a general formalism for the construction of cohomotopy invariants associated with a certain class of $S^1$-equivariant non-linear maps between Hilbert bundles. Applied to the Seiberg-Witten map, this formalism yields a new class of cohomotopy Seiberg-Witten invariants which have clear functorial properties with respect to diffeomorphisms of 4-manifolds. Our invariants and the Bauer-Furuta classes are directly comparable for 4-manifolds with $b_1=0$; they are equivalent when $b_1=0$ and $b_+>1$, but are finer in the case $b_1=0$, $b_+=1$ (they detect th…
In this paper we construct the space of smooth 4-manifolds and find the homotopy model for the connected components of the complement to the discriminant. The discriminant of this space is a singular hypersurface and its generic points correspond to manifolds with isolated Morse singularities. These spaces can be considered as a natural base for the recent theories studying invariants for families. We show that the theory of Bauer and Furuta can be raised to parametrized families on our configurational space and their invariant is the step-function on chambers. We also introduce the definition…
We determine the local equivalence class of the Seiberg-Witten Floer stable homotopy type of a spin rational homology 3-sphere $Y$ embedded into a spin rational homology $S^{1} \times S^{3}$ with a positive scalar curvature metric so that $Y$ generates the third homology. The main tool of the proof is a relative Bauer-Furuta-type invariant on a periodic-end 4-manifold. As a consequence, we give obstructions to positive scalar curvature metrics on spin rational homology $S^{1} \times S^{3}$, typically described as the coincidence of various Frøyshov-type invariants. This coincidence also yields…
We establish constraints on the topology of smooth Lefschetz fibrations with $4$-dimensional fibers, by studying the family Bauer-Furuta invariant. To compute this invariant, we analyze the framed bordism class of 1-dimensional Seiberg-Witten moduli spaces using the local index theorem by Bismut-Freed. Using this, we deduce new obstructions to the smooth isotopy to the identity for compositions of Dehn twists on $(-2)$-spheres in closed $4$-manifolds. We obtain several applications: (1) We exhibit the first examples of closed simply-connected symplectic $4$-manifolds admitting Torelli symplect…
On a smooth closed oriented $4$-manifold $M$ with a smooth action by a compact Lie group $G$, we define a $G$-monopole class as an element of $H^2(M;\Bbb Z)$ which is the first Chern class of a $G$-equivariant Spin$^c$ structure which has a solution of the Seiberg-Witten equations for any $G$-invariant Riemannian metric on $M$. We find $\Bbb Z_k$-monopole classes on some $\Bbb Z_k$-manifolds such as the connected sum of $k$ copies of a 4-manifold with nontrivial mod 2 Seiberg-Witten invariant or Bauer-Furuta invariant, where the $\Bbb Z_k$-action is a cyclic permutation of $k$ summands. As an …
