If and a connected closed oriented embedded surface has positive genus and , then
Blow up points on and choose the exceptional determinant classes which increase the Chern pairing on its proper transform by . The Blowup formula for the mixed Heegaard Floer invariant preserves nonvanishing, while the proper transform has square zero. A cut disjoint from it allows the relevant cobordism map to pass through . These groups vanish when the Chern pairing exceeds , so the mixed map would then vanish, a contradiction. Reverse the surface orientation for the absolute value. The positive-genus condition is essential: a small nullhomologous sphere has square zero and zero pairing and would violate the displayed inequality.
The geometric argument uses the Mixed Heegaard Floer invariant defined in Question 5(iii). First suppose ; the genus-zero qualification is discussed below. Write . Blow up distinct points of the surface. Its proper transform in has class
Choose the extension of the Spin-c structure with
Since , its exceptional evaluations are , so the Blowup formula for the mixed Heegaard Floer invariant has no extra power of . Thus , and
This calculation is why the self-intersection appears with a plus sign.
It remains to bound the Chern pairing for a square-zero surface . Its oriented normal bundle has Euler number zero and is trivial, so . Choose an embedded positive-square surface disjoint from , with positive direction left in its complement, and cut along . To see why the choice is possible, impose orthogonality to in the intersection form. A nonzero isotropic class uses at most one positive direction; therefore leaves at least two. Choose an integral positive-square class in that complement, represent it by a surface, and remove algebraically cancelling intersections with by tubing along . This alters genus but not the class. The neighborhood of supplies one positive direction and the complement supplies another. Since its normal Euler number is nonzero, is onto, proving that the cut is admissible.
Put the outgoing puncture inside , so that the plus Heegaard Floer cobordism map on the side containing passes through the Floer group of . On the chain level this means splitting the cobordism along that boundary and composing its handle maps; with the fixed determinant class, every intermediate generator has restriction . If the Chern pairing exceeded , the given completed minus group would be zero. As in Question 3, this is the completed convention: for a non-torsion structure, ordinary infinity may retain -torsion, whereas is invertible after completion. Such a pairing is positive for , so is non-torsion and the completed infinity group is zero as well. The completed fundamental long exact sequence, whose plus group is the usual plus theory, then makes that plus group zero. The Heegaard Floer cobordism map, and consequently the Mixed Heegaard Floer invariant, would vanish, contradicting nonvanishing. Therefore
Substituting the preceding blowup calculation proves
Reversing the orientation of the surface gives the usual absolute-value form of the Adjunction inequality for the mixed Heegaard Floer invariant.
The printed assumptions omit the positive-genus qualification. With the actual Floer groups, the asserted three-dimensional vanishing is false for : the torsion structure on has two nonzero minus towers, although its pairing is . Correspondingly, a small sphere embedded in a ball of a K3 surface has , and Chern pairing zero, while the canonical Mixed Heegaard Floer invariant is nonzero; the desired inequality would read . Thus the displayed proof establishes the intended positive-genus statement. If the supplied vanishing is instead taken literally as a formal additional axiom for every genus, the same factorization would force the inequality even for a sphere, but that axiom contradicts the actual computation.