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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
We construct a relation among right-handed Dehn twists in the mapping class group of a compact oriented surface of genus g with 4g+4 boundary components. This relation gives an explicit topological description of 4g+4 disjoint (-1)-sections of a hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibration of genus g on the manifold {CP}^2#(4g+5){-CP}^2.
We consider complex surfaces, viewed as smooth $4$-dimensional manifolds, that admit hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations over the $2$-sphere. In this paper, we show that the minimal number of singular fibers of such fibrations is equal to $2g+4$ for even $g\geq4$. For odd $g\geq7$, we show that the number is greater than or equal to $2g+6$. Moreover, we discuss the minimal number of singular fibers in all hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations over the $2$-sphere as well.
We introduce hyperelliptic simplified (more generally, directed) broken Lefschetz fibrations, which is a generalization of hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations. We construct involutions on the total spaces of such fibrations of genus $g\geq 3$ and extend these involutions to the four-manifolds obtained by blowing up the total spaces. The extended involutions induce double branched coverings over blown up sphere bundles over the sphere. We also show that the regular fiber of such a fibration of genus $g\geq 3$ represents a non-trivial rational homology class of the total space.
We define a new invariant $w$ for hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations over closed oriented surfaces, which counts the number of Dirac braids included intrinsically in the monodromy, by using chart description introduced by the second author. As an application, we prove that two hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations of genus $g$ over a given base space are stably isomorphic if and only if they have the same numbers of singular fibers of each type and they have the same value of $w$ if $g$ is odd. We also give examples of pair of hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations with the same numbers of singular f…
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 consider simply-connected $4$-manifolds admitting Lefschetz fibrations over the $2$-sphere. We explicitly construct nonhyperelliptic and hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations of genus $4$ on simply-connected $4$-manifolds which are exotic symplectic $4$-manifolds in the homeomorphism classes of $\mathbb{C}P^{2}\#8\overline{\mathbb{C} P^{2}}$ and $\mathbb{C} P^{2}\#9\overline{\mathbb{C} P^{2}}$, respectively. From these, we provide upper bounds for the minimal number of singular fibers of such fibrations. In addition, we prove that this number is equal to $18$ for $g=3$ when such fibrations are…
Every compact symplectic 4-manifold can be realized as a branched cover of the complex projective plane branched along a symplectic curve with cusp and node singularities; the covering map is induced by a triple of sections of a "very ample" line bundle. In this paper, we give an explicit formula describing the behavior of the braid monodromy invariants of the branch curve upon degree doubling of the linear system (from a very ample bundle $L^k$ to $L^{2k}$). As a consequence, we derive a similar degree doubling formula for the mapping class group monodromy of Donaldson's symplectic Lefschetz …
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 his Ph.D. thesis, Burak Ozbagci described an algorithm computing signatures of Lefschetz fibrations where the input is a factorization of the monodromy into a product of Dehn twists. In this note, we give a reformulation of Ozbagci's algorithm which becomes much easier to implement. Our main tool is Wall's non-additivity formula applied to what we call partial fiber sum decomposition of a Lefschetz fibration over 2-disk. We show that our algorithm works for bordered Lefschetz fibrations over disk and it yields a formula for the signature of branched covers where the branched loci are regula…
We generalize the classical Szpiro inequality to the case of a semistable family of hyperelliptic curves. We show that for a semistable symplectic Lefschetz fibration of hyperelliptic curves of genus $g$, the number $N$ of non-separating vanishing cycles and the number $D$ of singular fibers satisfy the inequality $N \leq (4g+2)D$.
We construct noncomplex smooth 4-manifolds which admit genus-2 Lefschetz fibrations over S^2. The fibrations are necessarily hyperelliptic, and the resulting 4-manifolds are not even homotopy equivalent to complex surfaces. Furthermore, these examples show that fiber sums of holomorphic Lefschetz fibrations do not necessarily admit complex structures.
We discuss $4$-dimensional achiral Lefschetz fibrations bounding $3$-dimensional open books and study their Lefschetz fibration (LF) embedding in a bounded $6$-dimensional manifold, in the sense of Ghanwat--Pancholi. As an application we give another proof of the fact that every closed orientable $4$-manifold embeds in $S^2 \times S^2 \times S^2$ . We also show that every achiral Lefschetz fibration with hyperelliptic monodromy admits LF embedding in $D^6 = D^2 \times D^4$ and discuss an obstruction to such LF embeddings.
Let $K$ be a knot in an integral homology 3-sphere $Y$, and $Σ$ the corresponding $n$-fold cyclic branched cover. Assuming that $Σ$ is a rational homology sphere (which is always the case when $n$ is a prime power), we give a formula for the Lefschetz number of the action that the covering translation induces on the reduced monopole homology of $Σ$. The proof relies on a careful analysis of the Seiberg--Witten equations on 3-orbifolds and of various $η$-invariants. We give several applications of our formula: (1) we calculate the Seiberg--Witten and Furuta--Ohta invariants for the mapping tori…
We show that any homologically non-trivial Dehn twist of a compact surface F with boundary is the lifting of a half-twist in the braid group B_n, with respect to a suitable branched covering p : F -> B^2. In particular, we allow the surface to have disconnected boundary. As a consequence, any allowable Lefschetz fibration on B^2 is a branched covering of B^2 x B^2.
The existence of a positive allowable Lefschetz fibration on a compact Stein surface with boundary was established by Loi and Piergallini by using branched covering techniques. Here we give an alternative simple proof of this fact and construct explicitly the vanishing cycles of the Lefschetz fibration, obtaining a direct identification of the set of compact Stein manifolds with positive allowable Lefschetz fibrations over a 2-disk. In the process we associate to every compact Stein manifold infinitely many nonequivalent such Lefschetz fibrations.
We construct new families of non-hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations by applying the daisy substitutions to the families of words $(c_1c_2 \cdots c_{2g-1}c_{2g}{c_{2g+1}}^2c_{2g}c_{2g-1} \cdots c_2c_1)^2 = 1$, $(c_1c_2 \cdots c_{2g}c_{2g+1})^{2g+2} = 1$, and $(c_1c_2 \cdots c_{2g-1}c_{2g})^{2(2g+1)} = 1$ in the mapping class group $Γ_{g}$ of the closed orientable surface of genus $g$, and study the sections of these Lefschetz fibrations. Furthemore, we show that the total spaces of some of these Lefschetz fibraions are irreducible exotic $4$-manifolds, and compute their Seiberg-Witten invariant…
We are interested in finite groups acting orientation-preservingly on 3-manifolds (arbitrary actions, ie not necessarily free actions). In particular we consider finite groups which contain an involution with nonempty connected fixed point set. This condition is satisfied by the isometry group of any hyperbolic cyclic branched covering of a strongly invertible knot as well as by the isometry group of any hyperbolic 2-fold branched covering of a knot in the 3-sphere. In the paper we give a characterization of nonsolvable groups of this type. Then we consider some possible applications to the st…
A geometric algorithm is introduced for finding a symplectic basis of the first integral homology group of a compact Riemann surface, which is a $p$-cyclic covering of ${\mathbb C} P^1$ branched over 3 points. The algorithm yields a previously unknown symplectic basis of the hyperelliptic curve defined by the affine equation $w^2=z^{2g+1}-1$ for genus $g\geq 2$. We then explicitly obtain the period matrix of this curve, its entries being elements of the $(2g+1)$-st cyclotomic field. In the proof, the details of our algorithm play no significant role.
Let $p:Σ'\toΣ$ be a finite Galois cover, possibly branched, with Galois group $G$. We are interested in the structure of the cohomology of $Σ'$ as a module over $G$. We treat the cases of branched and unbranched covers separately. In the case of branched covers, we give a complete classification of possible module structures of $H_1(Σ',\bC)$. In the unbranched case, we algebro-geometrically realize the representation of $G$ on holomorphic 1-forms on $Σ'$ as functions on unions of $G$-torsors. We also explicitly realize these representations for certain branched covers of hyperelliptic curves. …
Let $W$ be a nonorientable $4$-dimensional handlebody without $3$- and $4$-handles. We show that $W$ admits a Lefschetz fibration over the $2$-disk, whose regular fiber is a nonorientable surface with nonempty boundary. This is an analogue of a result of Harer obtained in the orientable case. As a corollary, we obtain a $4$-dimensional proof of the fact that every nonorientable closed $3$-manifold admits an open book decomposition, which was first proved by Berstein and Edmonds using branched coverings. Moreover, the monodromy of the open book we obtain for a given $3$-manifold belongs to the …
A class of complex hyperbolic lattices in PU(2,1) called the Deligne-Mostow lattices has been reinterpreted by Hirzebruch and others in terms of line arrangements. They use branched covers over a suitable blow up of the complete quadrilateral arrangement of lines in projective 2-space to construct the complex hyperbolic surfaces over the orbifolds associated to the lattices. Fundamental domains for these lattices have been built by Pasquinelli. Here we show how the fundamental domains can be interpreted in terms of line arrangements as above. This parallel is then applied in two contexts. Dash…
In this paper we obtain the following results: (1) Any compact Stein surface with boundary embeds naturally into a symplectic Lefschetz fibration over the 2-sphere. (2) There exists a minimal elliptic fibration over the 2-disk, which is not Stein. (3) The circle bundle over a genus n>1 surface with euler number e=-1 admits at least n+1 mutually non-homeomorphic simply-connected Stein fillings. (4) Any surface bundle over the circle, whose fiber is a closed surface of genus n>0 can be embedded into a closed symplectic 4-manifold, splitting the symplectic 4-manifold into two pieces both of which…
