English

$\text{Pin}^{\pm}$-structures on non-oriented 4-manifolds via Lefschetz fibrations

Geometric Topology 2025-01-06 v1

Abstract

We study necessary and sufficient conditions for a 4-dimensional Lefschetz fibration over the 2-disk to admit a Pin±\text{Pin}^{\pm}-structure, extending the work of A. Stipsicz in the orientable setting. As a corollary, we get existence results of Pin+\text{Pin}^{+} and Pin\text{Pin}^--structures on closed non-orientable 4-manifolds and on Lefschetz fibrations over the 2-sphere. In particular, we show via three explicit examples how to read-off Pin±\text{Pin}^{\pm}-structures from the Kirby diagram of a 4-manifold. We also provide a proof of the well-known fact that any closed 3-manifold MM admits a Pin\text{Pin}^--structure and we find a criterion to check whether or not it admits a Pin+\text{Pin}^+-structure in terms of a handlebody decomposition. We conclude the paper with a characterization of Pin+\text{Pin}^+-structures on vector bundles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.01848,
  title  = {$\text{Pin}^{\pm}$-structures on non-oriented 4-manifolds via Lefschetz fibrations},
  author = {Valentina Bais},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.01848},
  year   = {2025}
}