Seiberg-Witten theoretic invariants of lens spaces

Liviu I. Nicolaescu

Published 1999-01-18Version 1

We describe an effective algorithm for computing Seiberg-Witen invariants of lens spaces. We apply it to two problems: (i) to compute the Froyshov invariants of a large family of lens spaces; (ii) to show that the knowledge of the Seiberg-Witten invariants of lens spaces is topologically equivalent to the knowledge of its Casson-Walker invariant and of its Milnor-Turaev torsion. We also use the results in problem (i) to derive several topological results concerning the negative definite manifolds bounding a given lens space.