A gluing formula for families Seiberg-Witten invariants

Abstract

We prove a gluing formula for the families Seiberg-Witten invariants of families of $4$-manifolds obtained by fibrewise connected sum. Our formula expresses the families Seiberg-Witten invariants of such a connected sum family in terms of the ordinary Seiberg-Witten invariants of one of the summands, under certain assumptions on the families. We construct some variants of the families Seiberg-Witten invariants and prove the gluing formula also for these variants. One variant incorporates a twist of the families moduli space using the charge conjugation symmetry of the Seiberg-Witten equations. The other variant is an equivariant Seiberg-Witten invariant of smooth group actions. We consider several applications of the gluing formula including: obstructions to smooth isotopy of diffeomorpihsms, computation of the mod $2$ Seiberg-Witten invariants of spin structures, relations between mod $2$ Seiberg-Witten invariants of $4$-manifolds and obstructions to the existence of invariant metrics of positive scalar curvature for smooth group actions on $4$-manifolds.