Related papers: Broken Lefschetz fibrations and mapping class grou…

For each nonnegative integer m we show that any closed, oriented topological four-manifold with fundamental group Z_{4m+2} and odd intersection form, with possibly seven exceptions, either admits no smooth structure or admits infinitely…

We study necessary and sufficient conditions for a 4-dimensional Lefschetz fibration over the 2-disk to admit a $\text{Pin}^{\pm}$-structure, extending the work of A. Stipsicz in the orientable setting. As a corollary, we get existence…

For a holomorphic one-form $\mathbf{\xi}$ on a weakly 1-complete manifold $X$ with certain properties, we discussed the connectivity of the pair $(\hat{X}, F^{-1}(z))$, where $\pi : \hat{X} \to X$ is a covering map and…

We offer a new proof that two closed oriented 4-manifolds are cobordant if their signatures agree, in the spirit of Lickorish's proof that all closed oriented 3-manifolds bound 4-manifolds. Where Lickorish uses Heegaard splittings we use…

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…

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…

We define and study the contact cut graph which is an analogue of Hatcher and Thurston's cut graph for contact geometry, inspired by contact Heegaard splittings. We show how oriented paths in the contact cut graph correspond to Lefschetz…

We discuss embedding of manifolds in the category of open books, contact manifolds and contact open books. We prove an open book version of the Haefliger--Hirsch embedding theorem by showing that every $k$-connected closed $n$-manifold…

Given a projective surface and a generic projection to the plane, the braid monodromy factorization (and thus, the braid monodromy type) of the complement of its branch curve is one of the most important topological invariants, stable on…

We prove that if a contact 3-manifold admits an open book decomposition of genus 0, a certain intersection pattern cannot appear in the homology of any of its minimal symplectic fillings, and moreover, fillings cannot contain symplectic…

We prove that a Lefschetz fibration over the disc that, after compactification, has the same singular fibers as an extremal rational elliptic surface can be obtained by deleting a singular fiber and a section from the rational extremal…

We use Picard-Lefschetz theory to introduce a new local model for the planar projective twists $\tau_{\mathbb{A}\mathbb{P}^2} \in \mathrm{Symp}_{ct}(T^*\mathbb{A}\mathbb{P}^2), \ \mathbb{A} \in \{ \mathbb{R}, \mathbb{C} \}$. In each case,…

We introduce multisections of smooth, closed 4-manifolds, which generalize trisections to decompositions with more than three pieces. This decomposition describes an arbitrary smooth, closed 4-manifold as a sequence of cut systems on a…

We prove that adjoint orbits of semisimple Lie algebras have the structure of symplectic Lefschetz fibrations. We then describe the topology of the regular and singular fibres, in particular calculating their middle Betti numbers. For the…

The topology of symplectic 4-manifolds is related to that of singular plane curves via the concept of branched covers. Thus, various classification problems concerning symplectic 4-manifolds can be reformulated as questions about singular…

Bidouble covers $\pi : S \mapsto Q$ of the quadric Q are parametrized by connected families depending on four positive integers a,b,c,d. In the special case where b=d we call them abc-surfaces. Such a Galois covering $\pi$ admits a small…

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…

We introduce an idea of constructing Lefschetz fibrations of Weinstein manifolds from Weinstein handle decompositions on them. We prove theorems that formulate the idea for the cases of cotangent bundles and some plumbings. As a corollary,…

We show how certain stabilizations produce infinitely many closed oriented 4-manifolds which are the total spaces of genus g surface bundles (resp. Lefschetz fibrations) over genus h surfaces and have non-zero signature, but do not admit…

We address the question of existence of sections of fibrations in two settings. First, we show that a bundle with base a finite 2-complex admits a section if and only if the inclusion of the fiber is $\pi_1$-injective and the associated…