Twisted Donaldson invariants

Abstract

Fundamental group of a manifold gives a deep effect on its underlying smooth structure. In this paper we introduce a new variant of the Donaldson invariant in Yang-Mills gauge theory from twisting by the Picard group of a four manifold in the case when the fundamental group is free abelian. We then generalize it to the general case of fundamental groups by use of the framework of non commutative geometry. We also verify that our invariant distinguishes smooth structures between some homeomorphic four manifolds.