An inequality for the h-invariant in instanton Floer theory

Abstract

In math.DG/9903083 (henceforth referred to as EA) we defined an integer invariant $h(Y)$ for oriented integral homology 3-spheres $Y$ which only depends on the rational homology cobordism class of $Y$ and is additive under connected sums. In this paper we establish lower bounds for $h(Y)$ when $Y$ is the boundary of a smooth, compact, oriented 4-manifold with $b_2^+=1$. As applications, we give an upper bound for how much $h$ changes under -1 surgery on knots in terms of the slice genus of the knot, and compute $h$ for a family of Brieskorn spheres. This paper contains, in revised form, most of the material from v1 of EA that was left out in the final version of that paper. In particular, Theorem 1 of the present paper is virtually the same as Theorem 1 of v1 of EA. The proof is also essentially the same, but the exposition has been improved, with more details.