We construct examples of Lefschetz fibrations with prescribed singular fibers. By taking differences of pairs of such fibrations with the same singular fibers, we obtain new examples of surface bundles over surfaces with non-zero signature. From these we derive new upper bounds for the minimal genus of a surface representing a given element in the second homology of a mapping class group.
Using the recent results of Siebert and Tian about the holomorphicity of genus 2 Lefschetz fibrations with irreducible singular fibers, we show that any genus 2 Lefschetz fibration becomes holomorphic after fiber sum with a holomorphic fibration.
In this article, we generalize the classification of genus one Lefschetz fibrations to genus one simplified broken Lefschetz fibrations, which have fibers of genera one and zero. We classify genus one Lefschetz fibrations over the 2-disk with certain non-trivial global monodromies using chart descriptions, and identify the 4-manifolds admitting genus one simplified broken Lefschetz fibrations.
We give a maximal set of disjoint $(-1)$-sections of the well-known Lefschetz fibration constructed by Matsumoto, Cadavid and Korkmaz. In fact, we obtain several such sets for a fixed genus, which implies that the Matsumoto-Cadavid-Korkmaz Lefschetz fibration has more than one supporting minimal Lefschetz pencils. We also determine the diffeomorphism types of the obtained supporting minimal Lefschetz pencils.
It was shown by Usher that any fiber sum of Lefschetz fibrations over $S^2$ is minimal, which was conjectured by Stipsicz. We prove that the converse does not hold by showing that there exists an indecomposable minimal genus-2 Lefschetz fibration.
We give a short proof of a conjecture of Stipsicz on the minimality of fiber sums of Lefschetz fibrations, which was proved earlier by Usher. We then construct the first examples of genus g > 1 Lefschetz fibrations on minimal symplectic 4-manifolds which, up to diffeomorphisms of the summands, admit unique decompositions as fiber sums.
We show that any 4-manifold, after surgery on a curve, admits an achiral Lefschetz fibration. In particular, we show that the connected sum of any simply connected 4-manifold with a 2-sphere bundle over the 2-sphere will admit an achiral Lefschetz fibration. We also show these surgered manifolds admit near-symplectic structures and prove more generally that achiral Lefschetz fibrations with sections have near-symplectic structures. As a corollary to our proof we obtain an alternate proof of Gompf's result on the existence of symplectic structures on Lefschetz pencils.
We describe Lefschetz-Bott fibrations on complex line bundles over symplectic manifolds explicitly. As an application, we construct more than one strong symplectic filling of the link of the $A_{k}$-type singularity. In the appendix, we show that the total space of a Lefschetz-Bott fibration over the unit disk serves as a strong symplectic filling of a contact manifold compatible with an open book induced by the fibration.
Questions of geography of various classes of $4$-manifolds have been a central motivating question in $4$-manifold topology. Baykur and Korkmaz asked which small, simply connected, minimal $4$-manifolds admit a genus $2$ Lefschetz fibration. They were able to classify all the possible homeomorphism types and realize all but one with the exception of a genus $2$ Lefschetz fibration on a symplectic $4$-manifold homeomorphic, but not diffeomorphic to $3 \mathbb{CP}^2 \# 11\overline{\mathbb{CP}}^2$. We give a positive factorization of type $(10,10)$ that corresponds to such a genus $2$ Lefschetz f…
The topology of broken Lefschetz fibrations is studied by means of handle decompositions. We consider a slight generalization of round handles, and describe the handle diagrams for all that appear in dimension four. We establish simplified handlebody and monodromy representations for a certain subclass of broken Lefschetz fibrations/pencils, while showing that all near-symplectic closed 4-manifolds can be supported by these a la Auroux, Donaldson, Katzarkov. Various constructions of broken Lefschetz fibrations and a generalization of the symplectic fiber sum operation to the near-symplectic se…
In this short note, we give an explicit construction of inequivalent Lefschetz pencils and fibrations of same genera on blow-ups of all rational and ruled surfaces. This complements our earlier results, concluding that every symplectic 4-manifold, after sufficiently many blow-ups, admits inequivalent Lefschetz pencils and fibrations, which cannot be obtained from one another even via any sequence of fibered Luttinger surgeries.
The purpose of this note is to explain a combinatorial description of closed smooth oriented 4-manifolds in terms of positive Dehn twist factorizations of surface mapping classes, and further explore these connections. This is obtained via monodromy representations of simplified broken Lefschetz fibrations on 4-manifolds, for which we provide an extension of Hurwitz moves that allows us to uniquely determine the isomorphism class of a broken Lefschetz fibration. We furthermore discuss broken Lefschetz fibrations whose monodromies are contained in special subgroups of the mapping class group; n…
In this article, we characterize isomorphism classes of Lefschetz fibrations with multisections via their monodromy factorizations. We prove that two Lefschetz fibrations with multisections are isomorphic if and only if their monodromy factorizations in the relevant mapping class groups are related to each other by a finite collection of modifications, which extend the well-known Hurwitz equivalence. This in particular characterizes isomorphism classes of Lefschetz pencils. We then show that, from simple relations in the mapping class groups, one can derive new (and old) examples of Lefschetz …
We develop techniques to construct explicit symplectic Lefschetz fibrations over the 2-sphere with any prescribed signature and any spin type when the signature is divisible by 16. This solves a long-standing conjecture on the existence of such fibrations with positive signature. As applications, we produce symplectic 4-manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to connected sums of S^2 x S^2, with the smallest topology known to date, as well as larger examples as symplectic Lefschetz fibrations.
For each g > 2 and h > 1, we explicitly construct (1) fiber sum indecomposable relatively minimal genus g Lefschetz fibrations over genus h surfaces whose monodromies lie in the Torelli group, (2) fiber sum indecomposable genus g surface bundles over genus h surfaces whose monodromies are in the Torelli group (provided g > 3), and (3) infinitely many genus g Lefschetz fibrations over genus h surfaces that are not fiber sums of holomorphic ones.
In this article we find an upper and lower bound for the slope of genus g hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations, which is sharp when g = 2, and demonstrate the strong connection, in general, between the slope of hyperelliptic genus g Lefschetz fibrations and the number of separating vanishing cycles. Specifically, we show that the slope is greater than 4-4/g if and only if the fibration contains separating vanishing cycles. We also improve the existing bound on s/n, the ratio of number of separating vanishing cycles to the number of non-separating vanishing cycles, for hyperelliptic Lefschetz fib…
For every integer g greater than or equal to 2, there exist infinitely many pairwise nonhomeomorphic smooth 4-manifolds that admit genus-g Lefschetz fibrations over S^2 but do not carry any complex structure with either orientation. This extends a recent result of Ozbagci and Stipsicz.
We prove that a positive allowable Lefschetz fibration, PALF in short, admits a structure of exact Lefschetz fibration in the sense of Seidel \cite{Se08}. If the two-fold first Chern class of the total space is zero, we obtain the Fukaya-Seidel category. We prove that the derived Fukaya-Seidel category of PALF is independent of the choice of the symplectic structure. At the end of this paper, we study examples and show that derived Fukaya-Seidel categories have more information than the Milnor lattices of PALFs.
We show how to construct broken, achiral Lefschetz fibrations on arbitrary smooth, closed, oriented 4-manifolds. These are generalizations of Lefschetz fibrations over the 2-sphere, where we allow Lefschetz singularities with the non-standard orientation as well as circles of singularities corresponding to round 1-handles. We can also arrange that a given surface of square 0 is a fiber. The construction is easier and more explicit in the case of doubles of 4-manifolds without 3- and 4-handles, such as the homotopy 4-spheres arising from nontrivial balanced presentations of the trivial group.
We prove that any symplectic 4-manifold which is not a rational or ruled surface, after sufficiently many blow-ups, admits an arbitrary number of nonisomorphic Lefschetz fibrations of the same genus which cannot be obtained from one another via Luttinger surgeries. This generalizes results of Park and Yun who constructed pairs of nonisomorphic Lefschetz fibrations on knot surgered elliptic surfaces. In turn, we prove that there are monodromy factorizations of Lefschetz pencils which have the same characteristic numbers but cannot be obtained from each other via partial conjugations by Dehn twi…
We explicitly construct genus-2 Lefschetz fibrations whose total spaces are minimal symplectic 4-manifolds homeomorphic to complex rational surfaces CP^2 # p (-CP^2) for p=7, 8, 9, and to 3 CP^2 #q (-CP^2) for q =12,...,19. Complementarily, we prove that there are no minimal genus-2 Lefschetz fibrations whose total spaces are homeomorphic to any other simply-connected 4-manifold with b^+ at most 3, with one possible exception when b^+=3. Meanwhile, we produce positive Dehn twist factorizations for several new genus-2 Lefschetz fibrations with small number of critical points, including the smal…
We prove that every closed oriented smooth 4-manifold X admits a broken Lefschetz fibration (aka singular Lefschetz fibration) over the 2-sphere. Given any closed orientable surface F of square zero in X, we can choose the fibration so that F is a fiber. Moreover, we can arrange it so that there is only one Lefschetz critical point when the Euler characteristic e(X) is odd, and none when e(X) is even. We make use of topological modifications of smooth maps with fold and cusp singularities due to Saeki and Levine, and thus we get alternative proofs of previous existence results. Also shown is t…
In this article, we generalize the results discussed in [arXiv:1004.3762] by introducing a genus to generic fibers of Lefschetz fibrations. That is, we give families of relations in the mapping class groups of genus-1 surfaces with boundaries that represent rational homology disk smoothings of weighted homogeneous surface singularities whose resolution graphs are $3$-legged with a bad central vertex.
Let M be a smooth 4-manifold which admits a relatively minimal hyperelliptic genus h Lefschetz fibration over the 2-sphere. If all of the vanishing cycles for this fibration are nonseparating curves, then we show that M is a 2-fold cover of a 2-sphere bundle over the 2-sphere, branched over an embedded surface. If the collection of vanishing cycles for this fibration includes separating curves, we show that M is the relative minimalization of a Lefshetz fibration N, with N a 2-fold branched cover of a rational surface, branched over an embedded surface.
We show that under appropriate hypotheses, a plumbing of symplectic surfaces in a symplectic 4-manifold admits strongly convex neighborhoods. Moreover the neighborhoods are Lefschetz fibered with an easily-described open book on the boundary supporting the induced contact structure. We point out some applications to cut-and-paste constructions of symplectic 4-manifolds.
We consider product 4--manifolds S^1 X M, where M is a closed, connected and oriented 3-manifold. We prove that if S^1 X M admits a complex structure or a Lefschetz or Seifert fibration, then the following statement is true: S^1 X M admits a symplectic structure if and only if M fibers over S^1, under the additional assumption that M has no fake 3-cells. We also discuss the relationship between the geometry of M and complex structures and Seifert fibrations on S^1 X M.
We show that if a contact open book $(Σ,h)$ on a $(2n+1)$-manifold $M$ ($n\geq1$) is induced by a Lefschetz fibration $π:W \to D^2$, then there is a one-to-one correspondence between positive stabilizations of $(Σ,h)$ and \emph{positive stabilizations} of $π$. More precisely, any positive stabilization of $(Σ,h)$ is induced by the corresponding positive stabilization of $π$, and conversely any positive stabilization of $π$ induces the corresponding positive stabilization of $(Σ,h)$. We define \emph{exact open books} as boundary open books of compatible exact Lefschetz fibrations, and show that…
It is known that an arbitrary smooth, oriented 4-manifold admits the structure of what is called a broken Lefschetz fibration. Given a broken fibration, there are certain modifications, realized as homotopies of the fibration map, that enable one to construct infinitely many distinct fibrations of the same manifold. The aim of this paper is to prove that these modifications are sufficient to obtain every broken fibration in a given homotopy class of smooth maps. One notable application is that adding an additional "projection" move generates all broken fibrations, regardless of homotopy class.…
We construct two types of non-holomorphic Lefschetz fibrations over $S^2$ with $(-1)$-sections ---hence, they are fiber sum indecomposable--- by giving the corresponding positive relators. One type of the two does not satisfy the slope inequality (a necessary condition for a fibration to be holomorphic) and has a simply-connected total space, and the other has a total space that cannot admit any complex structure in the first place. These give an alternative existence proof for non-holomorphic Lefschetz pencils without Donaldson's theorem.
We describe a Lefschetz fibration of genus one on the disk cotangent bundle of any closed orientable surface S. As a corollary, we obtain an explicit genus one open book decomposition adapted to the canonical contact structure on the unit cotangent bundle of S.
In this article, we construct a genus-$0$ or genus-$1$ positive allowable Lefschetz fibration on any minimal symplectic filling of the link of non-cyclic quotient surface singularities. As a byproduct, we also show that any minimal symplectic filling of the link of quotient surface singularities can be obtained from a sequence of rational blowdowns from its minimal resolution.
We construct a positive allowable Lefschetz fibration over the disk on any minimal weak symplectic filling of the canonical contact structure on a lens space. Using this construction we prove that any minimal symplectic filling of the canonical contact structure on a lens space is obtained by a sequence of rational blowdowns from the minimal resolution of the corresponding complex two-dimensional cyclic quotient singularity.
We investigate the bounded cohomology of Lefschetz fibrations. If a Lefschetz fibration has regular fiber of genus at least 2 and it has at least two distinct vanishing cycles, we show that its Euler class is not bounded. As a consequence, we exclude the existence of negatively curved metrics on Lefschetz fibrations with more than one singular fiber.
In this paper, we study compact convex Lefschetz fibrations on compact convex symplectic manifolds (i.e., Liouville domains) of dimension $2n+2$ which are introduced by Seidel and later also studied by McLean. By a result of Akbulut-Arikan, the open book on $\partial W$, which we call \emph{convex open book}, induced by a compact convex Lefschetz fibration on $W$ carries the contact structure induced by the convex symplectic structure (i.e., Liouville structure) on $W$. Here we show that, up to a Liouville homotopy and a deformation of compact convex Lefschetz fibrations on $W$, any simply con…
We construct universal Lefschetz fibrations, defined in analogy with classical universal bundles. We also introduce the cobordism groups of Lefschetz fibrations, and we see how these groups are quotients of the singular bordism groups via the universal Lefschetz fibrations.
There exists a (relatively minimal) genus g Lefschetz fibration with only one singular fiber over a closed (Riemann) surface of genus h iff g>2 and h>1. The singular fiber can be chosen to be reducible or irreducible. Other results are that every Dehn twist on a closed surface of genus at least three is a product of two commutators and no Dehn twist on any closed surface is equal to a single commutator.
By applying the lantern relation substitutions to the positive relation of the genus two Lefschetz fibration over $\mathbb{S}^{2}$. We show that $K3\#2 \overline{\mathbb{CP}}{}^{2}$ can be rationally blown down along seven disjoint copies of the configuration $C_2$. We compute the Seiberg-Witten invariant of the resulting symplectic 4-manifolds, and show that they are symplectically minimal. We also investigate how these exotic smooth 4-manifolds constructed via lantern relation substitution method are fiber sum decomposable. Furthermore by considering all the possible decompositions for each …
Adapting a construction of D Salamon involving the U(1) vortex equations, we explore the properties of a Floer theory for 3-manifolds that fiber over S^1 which exhibits several parallels with monopole Floer homology, and in all likelihood coincides with it. The theory fits into a restricted analogue of a TQFT in which the cobordisms are required to be equipped with Lefschetz fibrations, and has connections to the dynamics of surface symplectomorphisms.
Let M denote the total space of a Lefschetz fibration, obtained by blowing up a Lefschetz pencil on an algebraic surface. We consider the n-fold fibre sum M(n), generalizing the construction of the elliptic surfaces E(n). For a Lefschetz pencil on a simply-connected minimal surface of general type we partially calculate the Seiberg-Witten invariants of the fibre sum M(n) using a formula of Morgan-Szabo-Taubes. As an application we derive an obstruction for self-diffeomorphisms of the boundary of the tubular neighbourhood of a general fibre in M(n) to extend over the complement of the neighbour…
In this article we study proper symplectic and iso-symplectic embeddings of $4$--manifolds in $6$--manifolds. We show that a closed orientable smooth $4$--manifold admitting a Lefschetz fibration over $\C P^1$ admits a symplectic embedding in the symplectic manifold $(\C P^1 \times \C P^1 \times \C P^1, ω_{pr}),$ where $ω_{pr}$ is the product symplectic form on $\C P^1 \times \C P^1 \times \C P^1.$ We also show that there exists a sub-critical Weinstein $6$--manifold in which all finite type Weinstein $4$--manifolds admit iso-symplectic embeddings.
We investigate the possible self-intersection numbers for sections of surface bundles and Lefschetz fibrations over surfaces. When the fiber genus g and the base genus h are positive, we prove that the adjunction bound 2h-2 is the only universal bound on the self-intersection number of a section of any such genus g bundle and fibration. As a side result, in the mapping class group of a surface with boundary, we calculate the precise value of the commutator lengths of all powers of a Dehn twist about a boundary component, concluding that the stable commutator length of such a Dehn twist is 1/2.…
We initiate a study of positive multisections of Lefschetz fibrations via positive factorizations in framed mapping class groups of surfaces. Using our methods, one can effectively capture various interesting symplectic surfaces in symplectic 4-manifolds as multisections, such as Seiberg-Witten basic classes and exceptional classes, or branched loci of compact Stein surfaces as branched coverings of the 4-ball. Various problems regarding the topology of symplectic 4-manifolds, such as the smooth classification of symplectic Calabi-Yau 4-manifolds, can be translated to combinatorial problems in…
We show that hyperelliptic symplectic Lefschetz fibrations are symplectically birational to two-fold covers of rational ruled surfaces, branched in a symplectically embedded surface. This reduces the classification of genus 2 fibrations to the classification of certain symplectic submanifolds in rational ruled surfaces.
A hyperelliptic broken Lefschetz fibration is a generalization of a hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibration. We construct and compute a local signature of hyperelliptic directed broken Lefschetz fibrations by generalizing Endo's local signature of hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations. It is described by his local signature and a rational-valued homomorphism on the subgroup of the hyperelliptic mapping class group which preserves a simple closed curve setwise.
In this note we introduce certain invariants of real Lefschetz fibrations. We call these invariants {\em real Lefschetz chains}. We prove that if the fiber genus is greater than 1, then the real Lefschetz chains are complete invariants of real Lefschetz fibrations with only real critical values. If however the fiber genus is 1, real Lefschetz chains are not sufficient to distinguish real Lefschetz fibrations. We show that by adding a certain binary decoration to real Lefschetz chains, we get a complete invariant.
Loi-Piergallini and Akbulut-Ozbagci showed that every compact Stein surface admits a Lefschetz fibration over the 2-disk with bounded fibers. In this note we give a more intrinsic alternative proof of this result.
For $g\geq 3$, we construct genus-$g$ Lefschetz fibrations over the two-sphere whose slopes are arbitrarily close to $2$. The total spaces of the Lefschetz fibrations can be chosen to be minimal and simply connected. It is also shown that the infimum and the supremum of slopes all Lefschetz fibrations are not realized as slopes.
Chart descriptions are a graphic method to describe monodromy representations of various topological objects. Here we introduce a chart description for hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations, and show that any hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibration can be stabilized by fiber-sum with certain basic Lefschetz fibrations.
Chart descriptions are a graphic method to describe monodromy representations of various topological objects. Here we introduce a chart description for genus-two Lefschetz fibrations, and show that any genus-two Lefschetz fibration can be stabilized by fiber-sum with certain basic Lefschetz fibrations.
Thanks to a result of Lisca and Matic and a refinement by Plamenevskaya, it is known that on a 4-manifold with boundary Stein structures with non-isomorphic Spinc structures induce contact structures with distinct Ozsvath-Szabo invariants. Here we give an infinite family of examples showing that converse of Lisca-Matic-Plamenevskaya theorem does not hold in general. Our examples arise from Mazur type corks.
We show that there exists a non-trivial simplified broken Lefschetz fibration which has infinitely many homotopy classes of sections. We also construct a non-trivial simplified broken Lefschetz fibration which has a section with non-negative square. It is known that no Lefschetz fibration satisfies either of the above conditions. Smith proved that every Lefschetz fibration has only finitely many homotopy classes of sections, and Smith and Stipsicz independently proved that a Lefschetz fibration is trivial if it has a section with non-negative square. So our results indicate that there are no g…
We prove upper bounds for the number of critical points in semistable symplectic Lefschetz fibrations. We also obtain a new lower bound for the number of nonseparting vanishing cycles in Lefschetz pencils, and reprove the known lower bounds for the commutator lengths of Dehn twists.
