Abstract. In the article we prove the Casson Invariant Conjecture of NeumannWahl for splice type surface singularities. Namely, for such an isolated complete intersection, whose link is an integral homology sphere, we show that the Casson invariant of the link is one-eighth the signature of the Milnor fiber.
IntroductionAlmost twenty years ago, Neumann and Wahl formulated the following conjecture:
an isolated complete intersection surface singularity whose link Σ is an integral homology 3-sphere Then the Casson invariant λ(Σ) of the link is one-eighth the signature of the Milnor fiber of (X, o).The conjecture can be reformulated in terms of the geometric genus pg of (X, o) as well (see below in 4.1).The conjecture is true for Brieskorn hypersurface singularities by a result of Fintushel and Stern [8]. This and additivity properties (with respect to splice decomposition) lead to the verification of the conjecture for Brieskorn complete intersections, done independently by Neumann-Wahl [15] and Fukuhara-Matsumoto-Sakamoto [9]. For suspension hypersurface singularities it was verified in [15]. Some iterative generalizations, related with cyclic coverings and using techniques of equivariant Casson invariant and gauge theory, were covered by Collin and Saveliev (cf. [3,4,5]).Recently, Neumann and Wahl have introduced an important family of complete intersection surface singularities, the splice type singularities. In [18] they treated the case when the link is an integral homology sphere (the reader may consult in [16,17,19] the case of rational homology sphere links too). In [18], they have also verified the above conjecture (by a direct computation of the geometric genus) for special splice type singularities (when the nodes of the splice diagram 'are in a line').The goal of the present article is to verify the conjecture for an arbitrary splice type singularity:Theorem. The Casson Invariant Conjecture is true for any splice type singularity with integral homology sphere link.