Surgery formulae for the Seiberg-Witten invariant of plumbed 3-manifolds

Abstract

Assume that $M(\mathcal{T})$ is a rational homology sphere plumbed 3--manifold associated with a connected negative definite graph $\mathcal{T}$. We consider the combinatorial multivariable Poincar\'e series associated with $\mathcal{T}$ and its counting functions, which encode rich topological information. Using the `periodic constant' of the series (with reduced variables) we prove surgery formulae for the normalized Seiberg--Witten invariants: the periodic constant appears as the difference of the Seiberg--Witten invariants associated with $M(\mathcal{T})$ and $M(\mathcal{T}\setminus \mathcal{I})$, where $\mathcal{I}$ is an arbitrary subset of the set of vertices of $\mathcal{T}$.