On Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten invariants

Abstract

This article is based on a lecture by the first author at the International Georgia Topology Conference 2001 (Athens, Georgia) and the Mathematische Arbeitstagung 2001 (Bonn, Germany). We sketch a proof of Witten's formula relating the Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten series modulo powers of degree c+2, with c = -{1/4}(7 chi + 11 sigma), for four-manifolds obeying some mild conditions, where chi and sigma are their Euler characteristic and signature. We use the moduli space of SO(3) monopoles as a cobordism between a link of the Donaldson moduli space of anti-self-dual SO(3) connections and links of the moduli spaces of Seiberg-Witten monopoles. Gluing techniques allow us to compute contributions from Seiberg-Witten moduli spaces lying in the first (or `one-bubble') level of the Uhlenbeck compactification of the moduli space of SO(3) monopoles.