Spin Borromean surgeries

Abstract

In 1986, Matveev defined the notion of Borromean surgery for closed oriented 3-manifolds and showed that the equivalence relation generated by this move is characterized by the pair (first betti number, linking form up to isomorphism). We explain how this extends for 3-manifolds with spin structure if we replace the linking form by the quadratic form defined by the spin structure. We then show that the equivalence relation among closed spin 3-manifolds generated by spin Borromean surgeries is characterized by the triple (first betti number, linking form up to isomorphism, Rochlin invariant modulo 8).