Related papers: Positive factorizations of mapping classes
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…
In this short note, we give an explicit construction of inequivalent Lefschetz pencils and fibrations of same genera on blow-ups of all rational and ruled surfaces. This complements our earlier results, concluding that every symplectic…
In the symplectic mapping class group of a $4$-dimensional Weinstein domain, we give a relation between two products of (right-handed) Dehn twists via holomorphic curve techniques. A key ingredient of the construction is a solution to the…
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…
Let M be a compact, orientable, irreducible, atoroidal 3-manifold with boundary an incompressible torus. Techniques based on the characteristic submanifold theory are used to bound the intersection number of two slopes \alpha and \beta on…
We give simple examples of elements of SL(2,Z) admitting inequivalent factorizations into products of Dehn twists. This can be interpreted in terms of inequivalent Stein fillings of a same contact 3-manifold by genus 1 Lefschetz fibrations…
A topological condition is given, characterizing which closed manifolds in dimensions < 8 (and conjecturally in general) admit symplectic structures. The condition is the existence of a certain fibration-like structure called a hyperpencil.…
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…
We construct using Lefschetz fibrations a large family of contact manifolds with the following properties: Any bounding contact embedding into an exact symplectic manifold satisfying a mild topological assumption is non-displaceable and…
The central extension of the mapping class groups of punctured surfaces of finite type that arises in quantum Teichm\"uller theory is 12 times the Meyer class plus the Euler classes of the punctures. This is analogous to the result obtained…
We study injective homomorphisms between big mapping class groups of infinite-type surfaces. First, we construct (uncountably many) examples of surfaces without boundary whose (pure) mapping class groups are not co-Hopfian; these are the…
In this article, we characterize isomorphism classes of Lefschetz fibrations with multisections via their monodromy factorizations. We prove that two Lefschetz fibrations with multisections are isomorphic if and only if their monodromy…
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…
We prove that the boundary Dehn twist on $K3\#K3\setminus B^4$ is nontrivial in the smooth mapping class group, providing another example of an exotic diffeomorphism on a simply-connected spin four-manifold. We do so by finding an algebraic…
We give new upper bounds on the stable commutator lengths of Dehn twists in mapping class groups and new lower bounds on the stable commutator lengths of Dehn twists in hyperelliptic mapping class groups. In particular, we show that the…
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…
We consider the question of extending a smooth homotopy coherent finite cyclic group action on the boundary of a smooth 4-manifold to its interior. As a result, we prove that Dehn twists along any Seifert homology sphere, except the…
We present the various constructions of new symplectic $4$-manifolds with non-negative signatures using the complex surfaces on the BMY line $c_1^2 = 9\chi_h$, the Cartwright-Steger surfaces, the quotients of Hirzebruch's certain…
We produce infinitely many distinct irreducible smooth 4-manifolds homeomorphic to #(2m+1)(CP^2 # -CP^2) and #(2n+1)(S^2 x S^2), respectively, for each m>3 and n>4. These provide the smallest exotic closed simply connected 4-manifolds with…
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…