SO(3) Monopoles, Level-One Seiberg-Witten Moduli Spaces, and Witten's Conjecture in Low Degrees

Abstract

We prove Witten's formula relating the Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten series modulo powers of degree $c+2$, with $c=-{1/4}(7χ+11σ)$, for four-manifolds obeying some mild conditions, where $χ$ and $σ$ 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.