The Yamabe invariants of Inoue surfaces, Kodaira surfaces, and their blowups

Abstract

Shortly after the introduction of Seiberg–Witten theory, LeBrun showed that the sign of the Yamabe invariant of a compact Kahler surface is determined by its Kodaira dimension. In this paper, we show that LeBrun’s Theorem is no longer true for non-Kahler surfaces. In particular, we show that the Yamabe invariants of Inoue surfaces and their blowups are all zero. We also take this opportunity to record a proof that the Yamabe invariants of Kodaira surfaces and their blowups are all zero, as previously indicated by LeBrun.