A vanishing result for a Casson-type instanton invariant

Abstract

Casson-type invariants emerging from Donaldson theory over certain negative definite 4-manifolds were recently suggested by Andrei Teleman. These are defined by a count of a zero-dimensional moduli space of flat instantons. Motivated by the cobordism program of proving Witten's conjecture, we use a moduli space of PU(2) Seiberg-Witten monopoles to exhibit an oriented one-dimensional cobordism of the instanton moduli space to the empty space. The Casson-type invariant must therefore vanish.