The harmonic cohomology of a Donaldson symplectic submanifold and of an Auroux symplectic submanifold are compared with that of its ambient space. We also study symplectic manifolds satisfying a weakly Lefschetz property, that is, the $s$-Lefschetz propery. In particular, we consider the symplectic blow-ups of the complex projective space along weakly Lefschetz symplectic submanifolds. As an application we construct, for each even integer $s\geq 2$, compact symplectic manifolds which are $s$-Lefschetz but not $(s+1)$-Lefschetz.
For a symplectic manifold $(M,ω)$, not necessarily hard Lefschetz, we prove a version of the Merkulov $dδ$--lemma. We also study the $dδ$--lemma and related cohomologies for compact symplectic solvmanifolds.
In this paper we study the behaviour of the Lefschetz property under the blow-up construction. We show that it is possible to reduce the dimension of the kernel of the Lefschetz map if we blow up along a suitable submanifold satisfying the Lefschetz property. We use that, together with results about Massey products, to construct nonformal (simply connected) symplectic manifolds satisfying the Lefschetz property.
Given a Lagrangian submanifold in a symplectic manifold and a Morse function on the submanifold, we show that there is an isotopic Morse function and a symplectic Lefschetz pencil on the manifold extending the Morse function to the whole manifold. From this construction we define a sequence of symplectic invariants classifying the isotopy classes of Lagrangian spheres in a symplectic 4-manifold.
We introduce a method to resolve a symplectic orbifold into a smooth symplectic manifold. Then we study how the formality and the Lefschetz property of the symplectic resolution are compared with that of the symplectic orbifold. We also study the formality of the symplectic blow-up of a symplectic orbifold along symplectic submanifolds disjoint from the orbifold singularities. This allows us to construct the first example of a simply connected compact symplectic manifold of dimension 8 which satisfies the Lefschetz property but is not formal, therefore giving a counter-example to a conjecture …
Let n>1 and G be the group SU(n) or Sp(n). This paper constructs compact symplectic manifolds whose symplectic quotient under a Hamiltonian G-action does not inherit the strong Lefschetz property.
We review topological properties of Kähler and symplectic manifolds, and of their odd-dimensional counterparts, coKähler and cosymplectic manifolds. We focus on formality, Lefschetz property and parity of Betti numbers, also distinguishing the simply-connected case (in the Kähler/symplectic situation) and the $b_1=1$ case (in the coKähler/cosymplectic situation).
We study some asymptotic properties of the sequences of symplectic Lefschetz pencils constructed by Donaldson. In particular we prove that the vanishing spheres of these pencils are, for large degree, conjugated under the action of the symplectomorphism group of the fiber. This implies the non-existence of homologically trivial vanishing spheres in these pencils. Moreover we show some basic topological properties of the space of asymptotically holomorphic transverse sections. These properties allow us to define a new set of symplectic invariants of the original symplectic structure.
In the literature, there are two different versions of Hard Lefschetz theorems for a compact Sasakian manifold. The first version, due to Kacimi-Alaoui, asserts that the basic cohomology of a compact Sasakian manifold satisfies the transverse Lefschetz property. The second version, established far more recently by Cappelletti-Montano, De Nicola, and Yudin, holds for the De Rham cohomology of a compact Sasakian manifold. In the current paper, using the formalism of odd dimensional symplectic geometry, we prove a Hard Lefschetz theorem for a compact $K$-contact manifold, which implies immediatel…
This is an announcement of results proved in [GGS1], [GGS2], [C], and [CG] where methods from Lie theory were used as new tools for the study of symplectic Lefschetz fibrations.
A symplectic structure is canonically constructed on any manifold endowed with a topological linear k-system whose fibers carry suitable symplectic data. As a consequence, the classification theory for Lefschetz pencils in the context of symplectic topology is analogous to the corresponding theory arising in differential topology.
In this paper we classify symplectic Lefschetz fibrations (with empty base locus) on a four-manifold which is the product of a three-manifold with a circle. This result provides further evidence in support of the following conjecture regarding symplectic structures on such a four-manifold: if the product of a three-manifold with a circle admits a symplectic structure, then the three-manifold must fiber over a circle, and up to a self-diffeomorphism of the four-manifold, the symplectic structure is deformation equivalent to the canonical symplectic structure determined by the fibration of the t…
We consider structures analogous to symplectic Lefschetz pencils in the context of a closed 4-manifold equipped with a `near-symplectic' structure (ie, a closed 2-form which is symplectic outside a union of circles where it vanishes transversely). Our main result asserts that, up to blowups, every near-symplectic 4-manifold (X,omega) can be decomposed into (a) two symplectic Lefschetz fibrations over discs, and (b) a fibre bundle over S^1 which relates the boundaries of the Lefschetz fibrations to each other via a sequence of fibrewise handle additions taking place in a neighbourhood of the ze…
We show that for each k > 3 there are infinitely many finite type Stein manifolds diffeomorphic to Euclidean space R^{2k} which are pairwise distinct as symplectic manifolds.
In this paper we construct six-dimensional compact non-Kähler Hamiltonian circle manifolds which satisfy the strong Lefschetz property themselves but nevertheless have a non-Lefschetz symplectic quotient. This provides the first known counter examples to the question whether the strong Lefschetz property descends to the symplectic quotient. We also give examples of Hamiltonian strong Lefschetz circle manifolds which have a non-Lefschetz fixed point submanifold. In addition, we establish a sufficient and necessary condition for a finitely presentable group to be the fundamental group of a stron…
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.
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 paper, we give a new method to construct a compact symplectic manifold which does not satisfy the hard Lefschetz property. Using our method, we construct a simply connected compact Kähler manifold $(M,J,ω)$ and a symplectic form $σ$ on $M$ which does not satisfy the hard Lefschetz property, but is symplectically deformation equivalent to the Kähler form $ω$. As a consequence, we can give an answer to the question posed by Khesin and McDuff as follows. According to symplectic Hodge theory, any symplectic form $ω$ on a smooth manifold $M$ defines \textit{symplectic harmonic forms} on $M$…
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 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…
In this paper, we develop symplectic Hodge theory on transversely symplectic foliations. In particular, we establish the symplectic $dδ$-lemma for any such foliations with the (transverse) $s$-Lefschetz property. As transversely symplectic foliations include many geometric structures, such as contact manifolds, co-symplectic manifolds, symplectic orbifolds, and symplectic quasi-folds as special examples, our work provides a unifying treatment of symplectic Hodge theory in these geometries. As an application, we show that on compact $K$-contact manifolds, the $s$-Lefschetz property implies a ge…
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.
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.
This set of lectures aims to give an overview of Donaldson's theory of linear systems on symplectic manifolds and the algebraic and geometric invariants to which they give rise. After collecting some of the relevant background, we discuss topological, algebraic and symplectic viewpoints on Lefschetz pencils and branched covers of the projective plane. The later lectures discuss invariants obtained by combining this theory with pseudo-holomorphic curve methods.
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 construct open symplectic manifolds which are convex at infinity ("Liouville manifolds") and which are diffeomorphic, but not symplectically isomorphic, to cotangent bundles T^*S^{n+1}, for any n+1 \geq 3. These manifolds are constructed as total spaces of Lefschetz fibrations, where the fibre and all but one of the vanishing cycles are fixed. We show that almost any choice of the last vanishing cycle leads to a nonstandard symplectic structure (those choices which yield standard T^*S^{n+1} can be exactly determined). The Corrigendum changes the statement and proof of Lemma 1.1 in the origi…
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.
In this paper we construct, in all odd complex dimensions, pairs of Liouville domains W_0 and W_1 which are diffeomorphic to the cotangent bundle of the sphere with one extra subcritical handle, but are not symplectomorphic. While W_0 is symplectically very similar to the cotangent bundle itself, W_1 is more unusual. We use Seidel's exact triangles for Floer cohomology to show that the wrapped Fukaya category of W_1 is trivial. As a corollary we obtain that W_1 contains no compact exact Lagrangian submanifolds.
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 define the concept of Lefschetz contact pencil and we show the existence of such structures on any contact manifold. The main idea of the proof is a generalization of the Donaldson arguments used in the symplectic case. We will analyze some of the applications of such existence theorem for the topology of approximately holomorphic contact submanifolds.
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 present a new proof of a result due to Taubes: if X is a closed symplectic four-manifold with b_+(X) > 1+b_1(X) and with some positive multiple of the symplectic form a rational class, then the Poincare dual of the canonical class of X may be represented by an embedded symplectic submanifold. The result builds on the existence of Lefschetz pencils on symplectic four-manifolds. We approach the topological problem of constructing submanifolds with locally positive intersections via almost complex geometry. The crux of the argument is that a Gromov invariant counting pseudoholomorphic sections…
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.
Given a symplectic manifold $(M^{2n},ω)$ we study Lagrangian cobordisms $V\subset E$ where $E$ is the total space of a Lefschetz fibration having $M$ as generic fiber. We prove a generation result for these cobordisms in the appropriate derived Fukaya category. As a corollary, we analyze the relations among the Lagrangian submanifolds $L\subset M$ that are induced by these cobordisms. This leads to a unified treatment - and a generalization - of the two types of relations among Lagrangian submanifolds of $M$ that were previously identified in the literature: those associated to Dehn twists tha…
We show that every de Rham cohomology class on the total space of a symplectic fiber bundle with closed Lefschetz fibers, admits a Poisson harmonic representative in the sense of Brylinski. The proof is based on a new characterization of closed Lefschetz manifolds.
We describe a simplification of Donaldson's arguments for the construction of symplectic hypersurfaces or Lefschetz pencils that makes it possible to avoid any reference to Yomdin's work on the complexity of real algebraic sets.
In this paper, we study the hard Lefschetz property of a symplectic manifold which admits a Hamiltonian torus action. More precisely, let $(M,ω)$ be a 6-dimensional compact symplectic manifold with a Hamiltonian $T^2$-action. We will show that if the moment map image of $M$ is a GKM-graph and if the graph is index-increasing, then $(M,ω)$ satisfies the hard Lefschetz property.
Given a closed symplectic manifold, we study when the Lefschetz decomposition induced by the $\mathfrak{sl}(2;\mathbb{R})$-representation yields a decomposition of the de Rham cohomology. In particular, this holds always true for the second de Rham cohomology group, or if the symplectic manifold satisfies the Hard Lefschetz Condition.
We extend Donaldson's asymptotically holomorphic techniques to symplectic orbifolds. More precisely, given a symplectic orbifold such that the symplectic form defines an integer cohomology class, we prove that there exist sections of large tensor powers of the prequantizable line bundle such that their zero sets are symplectic suborbifolds. We then derive a Lefschetz hyperplane theorem for these suborbifolds, that computes their real cohomology up to middle dimension. We also get the hard Lefschetz and formality properties for them, when the ambient manifold satisfies those properties.
We prove that any genus-2 Lefschetz fibration without reducible fibers and with ``transitive monodromy'' is holomorphic. The latter condition comprises all cases where the number of singular fibers is not congruent to 0 modulo 40. An auxiliary statement of independent interest is the holomorphicity of symplectic surfaces in S^2-bundles over S^2, of relative degree up to 7 over the base, and of symplectic surfaces in CP^2 of degree up to 17.
In a compact, symplectic real manifold, i.e supporting an antisymplectic involution, we use Donaldson's construction to build a codimension 2 symplectic submanifold invariant under the action of the involution. If the real part of the manifold is not empty, and if the symplectic form $\om$ is entire, then for all $k$ big enough, we can find a hypersurface Poincaré dual of $k[ω]$ such that its real part has at least $k^{\dim X/4}$ connected components, up to a constant independant of $k$. Finally we extend to our real case Donaldson's construction of Lefschetz pencils.
Integral symplectic 4-manifolds may be described in terms of Lefschetz fibrations. In this note we give a formula for the signature of any Lefschetz fibration in terms of the second cohomology of the moduli space of stable curves. As a consequence we see that the sphere in moduli space defined by any (not necessarily holomorphic) Lefschetz fibration has positive "symplectic volume"; it evaluates positively with the Kahler class. Some other applications of the signature formula and some more general results for genus two fibrations are discussed.
We construct symplectic submanifolds of symplectic manifolds with contact border. The boundary of such submanifolds is shown to be a contact submanifold of the contact border. We also give a topological characterization of the constructed submanifolds by means of a ``relative Lefschetz hyperplane Theorem''. We sketch some of the applications of the results.
Lefschetz fibration is the symplectic analogue of stable holomorphic fibration in complex geometry. A 4-dimensional stable holomorphic fibration satisfies the famous Parshin-Arakelov inequality. In this note we present an analogous inequality for a 4-dimensional Lefschetz fibration.
The well-known fact that any genus $g$ symplectic Lefschetz fibration $ X^{4}\to S^{2}$ is given by a word that is equal to the identity element in the mapping class group and each of whose elements is given by a positive Dehn twist, provides an intimate relationship between words in the mapping class group and 4-manifolds that are realized as symplectic Lefschetz fibrations. In this article we provide new words in the mapping class group, hence new symplectic Lefschetz fibrations. We also compute the signatures of those symplectic Lefschetz fibrations.
In this note, we verify that the complex Kodaira dimension $κ^h$ equals the symplectic Kodaira dimension $κ^s$ for smooth 4-manifolds with complex and symplectic structures. We also calculate the Kodaira dimension for many Lefschetz fibrations.
We study Lefschetz pencils on symplectic four-manifolds via the associated spheres in the moduli spaces of curves, and in particular their intersections with certain natural divisors. An invariant defined from such intersection numbers can distinguish manifolds with torsion first Chern class. We prove that pencils of large degree always give spheres which behave `homologically' like rational curves; contrastingly, we give the first constructive example of a symplectic non-holomorphic Lefschetz pencil. We also prove that only finitely many values of signature or Euler characteristic are realise…
We establish constraints on the topology of smooth Lefschetz fibrations with $4$-dimensional fibers, by studying the family Bauer-Furuta invariant. To compute this invariant, we analyze the framed bordism class of 1-dimensional Seiberg-Witten moduli spaces using the local index theorem by Bismut-Freed. Using this, we deduce new obstructions to the smooth isotopy to the identity for compositions of Dehn twists on $(-2)$-spheres in closed $4$-manifolds. We obtain several applications: (1) We exhibit the first examples of closed simply-connected symplectic $4$-manifolds admitting Torelli symplect…
Generalized complex (GC) geometry interpolates between ordinary symplectic and complex geometry. Stable generalized complex manifolds (first introduced by Cavalcanti, Gualtieri in 2015) carry a Poisson structure which is generically symplectic, but degenerates on a (real) codimension-2 submanifold. Up to gauge equivalence, the stable generalized complex structure is thus determined by what is called an elliptic symplectic form, which allows the extension of a number of techniques and results from symplectic geometry to stable GC geometry. This paper introduces a new type of submanifold in stab…
We give a generalization of the concept of near-symplectic structures to 2n dimensions. According to our definition, a closed 2-form ωon a 2n-manifold M is near-symplectic, if it is symplectic outside a submanifold Z of codimension 3, where ω^{n-1} vanishes. This extends the concept known in dimension 4. We depict how this notion relates to near-symplectic 4-manifolds and broken Lefschetz fibrations via some examples. We define a generalized broken Lefschetz fibration, or BLF, as a singular map with indefinite folds and Lefschetz-type singularities. We show that given such a map on a 2n-manifo…
We establish a Hard Lefschetz Theorem for the de Rham cohomology of compact Vaisman manifolds. A similar result is proved for the basic cohomology with respect to the Lee vector field. Motivated by these results, we introduce the notions of a Lefschetz and of a basic Lefschetz locally conformal symplectic (l.c.s.) manifold of the first kind. We prove that the two notions are equivalent if there exists a Riemannian metric such that the Lee vector field is unitary and parallel and its metric dual $1$-form coincides with the Lee $1$-form. Finally, we discuss several examples of compact l.c.s. man…
