The mod 2 Seiberg–Witten invariants of spin structures and spin families

Abstract We completely determine the mod 2 Seiberg–Witten invariants for any spin structure on any closed, oriented, smooth 4‐manifold . Our computation confirms the validity of the simple‐type conjecture mod 2 for spin structures. Our proof also works for families of spin 4‐manifolds and thus computes the mod 2 Seiberg–Witten invariants for spin families. The proof of our main result uses ‐symmetry to define an enhancement of the mod 2 Seiberg–Witten invariants. We prove a connected sum formula for the enhanced invariant using localisation in equivariant cohomology. Unlike the usual Seiberg–Witten invariant, the enhanced invariant does not vanish on taking connected sums and by exploiting this property, we are able to compute the enhanced invariant.