Mathematical Research Letters

Volume 3, Issue 5, September 1996 pp. 591-608.

Associativity properties of the symplectic sum

Authors: Dusa McDuff and Margaret Symington
Author institution: State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Stanford University

Summary: In this note we apply a 4-fold sum operation to develop an associativity rule for the pairwise symplectic sum. This allows us to show that certain diffeomorphic symplectic $4$-manifolds made out of elliptic surfaces are in fact symplectically deformation equivalent. We also show that blow-up points can be traded from one side of a symplectic sum to another without changing the symplectic deformation class of the resulting manifold.

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