Relative Ruan and Gromov-Taubes Invariants of Symplectic 4-Manifolds

Abstract

We define relative Ruan invariants that count embedded connected symplectic submanifolds which contact a fixed stable symplectic hypersurface V in a symplectic 4-manifold (X,w) at prescribed points with prescribed contact orders (in addition to insertions on X\V) for stable V. We obtain invariants of the deformation class of (X,V,w). Two large issues must be tackled to define such invariants: (1) Curves lying in the hypersurface V and (2) genericity results for almost complex structures constrained to make V pseudo-holomorphic (or almost complex). Moreover, these invariants are refined to take into account rim tori decompositions. In the latter part of the paper, we extend the definition to disconnected submanifolds and construct relative Gromov-Taubes invariants.