Heegaard Floer homology 2026-10-14
Heegaard Floer homology assigns groups to a closed oriented three-manifold with a Spin-c structure. A pointed Heegaard diagram of genus gives product Lagrangian tori ; the chain complex is generated by their intersection points and its differential counts Whitney disk classes represented by holomorphic disks. The minus, infinity, plus and hat versions use different powers or quotients of the variable . The Heegaard Floer cobordism maps and the Mixed Heegaard Floer invariant relate these groups to smooth four-dimensional topology.
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.
Remove two disjoint four-balls from , giving . An Admissible cut for a Heegaard Floer mixed map is a separating three-manifold with
The last condition is the Mayer-Vietoris connecting-map condition. It makes a Spin-c structure on uniquely determined by its restrictions to the two pieces, avoiding an uncontrolled sum of extensions in the composition law. Such cuts exist when : represent an integral positive-square class by an embedded surface whose tubular neighborhood carries one positive direction and whose complement retains another. One can construct an embedded representative by resolving intersections of a representative cycle; the genus may increase without changing its class or square. The nonzero normal Euler number makes the restriction surjective, so the connecting-map condition holds. Puncture on either side of the cut.
Write and . Both infinity Heegaard Floer cobordism maps vanish by positivity. Naturality with respect to the exact sequence
gives and . Exactness identifies with a degree- isomorphism from onto , namely the two versions of Reduced Heegaard Floer homology. Hence the inverse on these reduced groups is defined, and one forms
This is the construction of the Mixed Heegaard Floer invariant, rather than the zero ordinary composite.
Let be the top minus generator, of degree , and the bottom plus generator, of degree zero. For , insert its degree-one homology actions in the Heegaard Floer cobordism maps and define
This is an integer up to the overall orientation sign. cobordism composition and associativity show independence of the admissible cut and handle choices. Equivalently, fixing the relevant orientation data removes the overall sign ambiguity.
The grading condition can be checked explicitly. Since and , the sum of the ordinary cobordism shifts is , where . The inverse connecting map contributes another . Therefore the output degree on is , and the displayed invariant vanishes unless .
Finally, two positive pieces are needed, so that both infinity maps vanish and the reduced-group factorization is available. For an admissible cut the connecting-map condition and signature additivity imply that the two positive subspaces inject as orthogonal subspaces of the closed intersection form; hence . With only one positive direction no such admissible cut exists, and a chamber-dependent construction requires extra choices. With no positive direction, the ordinary infinity maps need not vanish at all. This explains the stated bound for the invariant defined here.