July 26: Seiberg-Witten Theory

Tim Nguyen

The Seiberg-Witten equations and the invariants they produce for smooth 3 and 4-manifolds have played an important role in low-dimensional topology since their inception in 1994 by Ed Witten. We discuss these invariants and in particular, how the Seiberg-Witten Floer homology groups in dimension 3 yield for us a (family of) TQFTs.