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Abstract:  Given a knot K inside an integer homology sphere Y , the Casson-Lin-Herald invariant can be interpreted as a signed count of conjugacy classes of irreducible representations of the knot complement into SU(2) which map the meridian of the knot to a fixed conjugacy class. It has the interesting feature that it determines the Tristram-Levine signature of the knot associated to the conjugacy class chosen.

Turning things around, given a 4-manifold X with the integral homology of  \(S^1 × S^3\), and an embedded torus which is homologically non trivial, we define a signed count of conjugacy classes of irreducible representations of the torus complement into SU(2) which satisfy an analogous fixed conjugacy class condition to the one mentioned above for the knot case. Our count recovers the Casson-Lin-Herald invariant of the knot in the product case, thus it can be regarded as implicitly defining a Tristram-Levine signature for tori.

This count can also be considered as a singular Furuta-Ohta invariant, and it is a special case of a larger family of Donaldson invariants which we also define. In particular, when (X, T) is obtained from a self-concordance of a knot (Y, K) satisfying an admissibility condition, these Donaldson invariants are related to the Lefschetz number of an Instanton Floer homology for knots which we construct. Moreover, from these Floer groups we obtain Frøyshov invariants for knots which allows us to assign a Frøyshov invariant to an embedded torus whenever it arises from such a self-concordance.