Related papers: Lefschetz fibration structures on knot surgery 4-m…
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…
Motivated by the programmes initiated by Taubes and Perutz, we study the geometry of near-symplectic 4-manifolds, i.e., manifolds equipped with a closed 2-form which is symplectic outside a union of embedded 1-dimensional submanifolds, and…
We explicitly construct a genus-$3$ Lefschetz fibration over $\mathbb{S}^{2}$ whose total space is $\mathbb{T}^{2}\times \mathbb{S}^{2}\# 6\overline{\mathbb{C} P^{2}}$ using the monodromy of Matsumoto's genus-$2$ Lefschetz fibration. We…
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…
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…
In this article we prove that, if $X$ is a smooth $4$-manifold containing an embedded double node neighborhood, all knot surgery $4$-manifolds $X_K$ are mutually diffeomorphic to each other after a connected sum with $\mathbb{CP}^2$. Hence,…
In this article, we construct infinitley many simply connected, nonsymplectic and pairwise nondiffeomorphic 4-manifolds starting from E(n) and applying the sequence of knot surgery, ordinary blowups and rational blowdown. We also compute…
We find an infinite family of Seifert fibered surgeries on strongly invertible knots which do not have primitive/Seifert positions. Each member of the family is obtained from a trefoil knot after alternate twists along a pair of seiferters…
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…
In this paper we give an explicit construction of a symplectic Lefschetz fibration whose total space is a smooth compact four dimensional manifold with a prescribed fundamental group. We also study the numerical properties of the sections…
We find a new relation among right-handed Dehn twists in the mapping class group of a $k$-holed torus for $4 \leq k \leq 9$. This relation induces an elliptic Lefschetz pencil structure on the four-manifold \cp $#(9-k)$ \cpb $ $ with $k$…
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…
We present an approach to constructing broken Lefschetz fibrations (BLFs) $f:X\rightarrow S^2$ from a handle decomposition of a 4-manifold $X$. Given a handle decomposition as input these techniques yield explicit descriptions of the BLFs,…
Fintushel and Stern have proved that if S \subset X is a symplectic surface in a symplectic 4-manifold such that S has simply-connected complement and nonnegative self-intersection, then there are infinitely many topologically equivalent…
We consider the question of when is the closed manifold obtained by elementary surgery on an $n$-knot Seifert fibred over a 2-orbifold. After some observations on the classical case, we concentrate on the cases n=2 and 3. We have found a…
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…
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…
We study a symplectic surgery operation we call unchaining, which effectively reduces the second Betti number and the symplectic Kodaira dimension at the same time. Using unchaining, we give novel constructions of symplectic Calabi-Yau…
Auroux, Donaldson and Katzarkov introduced broken Lefschetz fibrations as a generalization of Lefshcetz fibrations in order to describe near-symplectic 4-manifolds. We first study monodromy representations of higher sides of genus-1…
The broken genera are orientation preserving diffeomorphism invariants of closed oriented 4-manifolds, defined via broken Lefschetz fibrations. We study the properties of the broken genera invariants, and calculate them for various…