Heegaard Floer chain complex ($C{F}^{-}(Y,\mathfrak{s})$)

For an admissible pointed Heegaard diagram, $C{F}^{-}$ is a free $\mathbb{Z}[U]$ chain complex with one generator for each point of ${\mathbb{T}}_{\alpha }\cap {\mathbb{T}}_{\beta }$. Each generator is an unordered selection containing exactly one intersection on each alpha circle and exactly one on each beta circle. After choosing coherent orientations,Here $\hat{\mathcal{M}}$ is the moduli space modulo strip translation, $\mu$ is the Maslov index, and $n_z$ is multiplicity at the basepoint. Holomorphic representatives have nonnegative domain multiplicities. The differential lowers grading by one and $U$ lowers it by two. Boundary strata of one-dimensional moduli spaces give the cancellation proving ${\partial }^2=0$. Its homology is $H{F}^{-}$.

Over $\mathbb{Z}$, holomorphic disk moduli spaces in a Heegaard Floer chain complex must be oriented compatibly with gluing: the orientation of a concatenated disk class is the product determinant-line orientation of its two factors. Boundary orientations of compactified one-dimensional moduli spaces then make broken disks cancel, yielding ${\partial }^2=0$. Isolated regular disks contribute $+1$ or $-1$. Changing the chosen orientation at an intersection generator changes the corresponding row and column signs of the differential and yields an isomorphic integral chain complex. Cobordism triangle counts require compatible orientation choices as well; an overall orientation ambiguity accounts for the usual sign ambiguity of the closed invariant.

An embedded positive domain which is a bigon or rectangle, has convex alternating alpha and beta corners, and contains no other selected coordinate in its interior, has Maslov index one. A bigon has Euler measure $1/2$ and two corner averages $1/4$; a rectangle has Euler measure zero and four corner averages $1/4$. For the usual regular complex structure, its holomorphic disk count modulo translation is $\pm 1$. For a bigon the Riemann map to the strip is unique up to translation. For a rectangle, the tautological correspondence represents the disk in the symmetric product by a branched double cover of the strip onto the rectangular domain: its conformal modulus fixes the branch parameter, and the only remaining freedom is translation. The resulting isolated regular disk gives one point in the oriented moduli space. The differential coefficient is $\pm U^{n_z}$, so a basepoint-free domain contributes a unit.

For generators in the same Spin-c structure and a Whitney disk class $\psi$ joining them,The ambiguity is the divisibility of $c_1(\mathfrak{s})$ on $H_2(Y)$; a torsion determinant class gives an integer relative grading. Adding a sphere class changes $\mu$ by two and $n_z$ by one, so it leaves the difference unchanged. For a domain $D$, the index can be calculated as $\mu (D)=e(D)+n_{\mathbf{x}}(D)+n_{\mathbf{y}}(D)$, where $e$ is Euler measure and each $n_{\mathbf{x}}$ is the sum of averages of the four adjacent region multiplicities at the selected intersections.

For a torsion Spin-c structure, the relative grading of Heegaard Floer homology lifts canonically to a rational absolute grading, normalized by the bottom plus generator of $S^3$ having degree zero. Multiplication by $U$ has degree $-2$, and a Heegaard Floer cobordism map has degree $(c_1^2-2\chi -3\sigma )/4$. The correction term $d(Y,\mathfrak{s})$ is the lowest grading of the image of $H{F}^{\infty }$ in $H{F}^{+}$ for a rational homology sphere. A pure tower then has bottom plus degree $d$ and top minus degree $d-2$ in the $i<0$ minus convention. Keeping that shift explicit prevents errors of two in surgery and mixed-invariant calculations.

For intersection generators $\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y}$, a Whitney disk is a map of a disk into the symmetric product, with its two boundary semicircles mapped to the two product tori and its endpoints mapped to $\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y}$. Its homotopy class belongs to ${\pi }_2(\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y})$. Projecting it to the Heegaard surface gives an integral domain. With the surface oriented, the convention is ${\partial }_{\alpha }D=\mathbf{y}-\mathbf{x}$. The obstruction to a disk is the class $ϵ(\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y})\in H_1(Y)$ obtained by joining the points along alpha arcs and returning along beta arcs. In the Heegaard Floer setup, its vanishing is equivalent to equality of the generators' Spin-c structures; for the rational homology sphere diagrams this is equivalent to ${\pi }_2(\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y})\ne \varnothing$.