Floer homology is typically defined by associating to the object of interest an infinite-dimensional manifold and a real valued function on it. In the symplectic version, this is the free loop space of a symplectic manifold with the symplectic action functional. For the (instanton) version for three-manifolds, it is the space of SU(2)-connections on a three-dimensional manifold with the Chern–Simons functional. Loosely speaking, Floer homology is the Morse homology of the function on the infinite-dimensional manifold. A Floer chain complex is formed from the abelian group spanned by the critical points of the function (or possibly certain collections of critical points). The differential of the chain complex is defined by counting the function's gradient flow lines connecting certain pairs of critical points (or collections thereof). Floer homology is the homology of this chain complex.