On higher rank instantons & the monopole cobordism program

Witten's conjecture suggests that the polynomial invariants of Donaldson are expressible in terms of the Seiberg-Witten invariants if the underlying four-manifold is of simple type. A higher rank version of the Donaldson invariants was introduced by Kronheimer. Before even having been defined, the physicists Mari\~no and Moore had already suggested that there should be a generalisation of Witten's conjecture to this type of invariants. We study a generalisation of the classical cobordism program to the higher rank situation and obtain vanishing results which gives evidence that the generalisation of Witten's conjecture should hold.Comment: This manuscript fusions the two previous manuscripts "What to expect from U(n) monopoles" and "PU(N) monopoles, higher rank instantons, and the monopole invariants". Furthermore, one of the vanishing arguments is made more precise. 29 page

A class of knots with simple SU(2)SU(2) representations

We call a knot in the 3-sphere $SU(2)$-simple if all representations of the fundamental group of its complement which map a meridian to a trace-free element in $SU(2)$ are binary dihedral. This is a generalisation of being a 2-bridge knot. Pretzel knots with bridge number $\geq 3$ are not $SU(2)$-simple. We provide an infinite family of knots $K$ with bridge number $\geq 3$ which are $SU(2)$-simple. One expects the instanton knot Floer homology $I^\natural(K)$ of a $SU(2)$-simple knot to be as small as it can be -- of rank equal to the knot determinant $\det(K)$. In fact, the complex underlying $I^\natural(K)$ is of rank equal to $\det(K)$, provided a genericity assumption holds that is reasonable to expect. Thus formally there is a resemblance to strong L-spaces in Heegaard Floer homology. For the class of $SU(2)$-simple knots that we introduce this formal resemblance is reflected topologically: The branched double covers of these knots are strong L-spaces. In fact, somewhat surprisingly, these knots are alternating. However, the Conway spheres are hidden in any alternating diagram. With the methods we use, we show that an integer homology 3-sphere which is a graph manifold always admits irreducible representations of its fundamental group.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, to appear in Selecta Mathematic

A note on Logarithmic Transformations on the Hopf surface

In this note we study logarithmic transformations in the sense of differential topology on two fibers of the Hopf surface. It is known that such transformations are susceptible to yield exotic smooth structures on four-manifolds. We will show here that this is not the case for the Hopf surface, all integer homology Hopf surfaces we obtain are diffeomorphic to the standard Hopf surface.Comment: 9 page