On Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten invariants

Abstract

This article is based on a lecture by the first author at the International Georgia Topology Conference 2001 (Athens, Georgia) and the Mathematische Arbeitstagung 2001 (Bonn, Germany). We sketch a proof of Witten's formula relating the Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten series modulo powers of degree c+2, with c = -{1/4}(7 chi + 11 sigma), for four-manifolds obeying some mild conditions, where chi and sigma are their Euler characteristic and signature. We use the moduli space of SO(3) monopoles as a cobordism between a link of the Donaldson moduli space of anti-self-dual SO(3) connections and links of the moduli spaces of Seiberg-Witten monopoles. Gluing techniques allow us to compute contributions from Seiberg-Witten moduli spaces lying in the first (or `one-bubble') level of the Uhlenbeck compactification of the moduli space of SO(3) monopoles.

arXiv commentLecture notes for talk by the first author at the International Georgia Topology Conference 2001 (Athens, Georgia) and the Mathematische Arbeitstagung 2001 (Bonn, Germany). 11 pages