Lectures on Seiberg-Witten Invariants

In the fall of 1994, Edward Witten proposed a set of equations which give the main results of Donaldson theory in a far simpler way than had been thought possible. The purpose of these notes is to provide an elementary introduction to the equations that Witten proposed. They are directed towards graduate students who have already taken a basic course in differential geometry and topology.

Preliminaries.- Spin geometry on four-manifolds.- Global analysis of the Seiberg-Witten equations.