Related papers: Positive factorizations of mapping classes

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…

We consider the homotopical dynamics on compact orientable surfaces of positive genus g. We establish a sufficient and necessary algebraic criterion for homotopy classes with infinitely many periodic points of maps on such surfaces in terms…

Kodaira's classification of singular fibers in elliptic fibrations and its translation into the language of monodromies and Lefschetz fibrations has been a boon to the study of 4-manifolds. In this article, we begin the work of translating…

We give a finite presentation of the mapping class group of an oriented (possibly bounded) surface of genus greater or equal than 1, considering Dehn twists on a very simple set of curves.

Manifolds admitting positive sectional curvature are conjectured to have rigid homotopical structure and, in particular, comparatively small Euler charateristics. In this article, we obtain upper bounds for the Euler characteristic of a…

We study the degree of an $L$-Lipschitz map between Riemannian manifolds, proving new upper bounds and constructing new examples. For instance, if $X_k$ is the connected sum of $k$ copies of $\mathbb CP^2$ for $k \ge 4$, then we prove that…

We study a quasimorphism, which we call the Dehn twist coefficient (DTC), from the mapping class group of a surface (with a chosen compact boundary component) that generalizes the well-studied fractional Dehn twist coefficient (FDTC) to…

We study smooth proper embeddings of compact orientable surfaces in compact orientable $4$-manifolds and elements in the mapping class group of that surface which are induced by diffeomorphisms of the ambient $4$-manifolds. We call such…

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…

A complete description of the global monodromy of a Lefschetz fibration arising from the Fermat surface of degree 4 is given. As a by-product we get a positive relation among right hand Dehn twists in the mapping class group of a closed…

We study the Dehn function at infinity in the mapping class group, finding a polynomial upper bound of degree four. This is the same upper bound that holds for arbitrary right-angled Artin groups.

We prove that if a contact manifold $(M,\xi)$ is supported by a planar open book, then Euler characteristic and signature of any Stein filling of $(M,\xi)$ is bounded. We also prove a similar finiteness result for contact manifolds…

This paper appears as the confluence of hyperbolic dynamics, symplectic topology and low dimensional topology, etc. We show that composite symplectic Dehn twists have certain form of nonuniform hyperbolicity: it has positive topological…

Let $\text{Mod}(S_g)$ be the mapping class group of the closed orientable surface $S_g$ of genus $g \geq 1$. In this paper, we develop various methods for factoring periodic mapping classes into Dehn twists, up to conjugacy. As…

We develop techniques to construct explicit symplectic Lefschetz fibrations over the 2-sphere with any prescribed signature and any spin type when the signature is divisible by 16. This solves a long-standing conjecture on the existence of…

In this article we study proper symplectic and iso-symplectic embeddings of $4$--manifolds in $6$--manifolds. We show that a closed orientable smooth $4$--manifold admitting a Lefschetz fibration over $\C P^1$ admits a symplectic embedding…

This note has two related but independent parts. Firstly, we prove a generalisation of a recent result of Gay on the smooth mapping class group of $S^4$. Secondly, we give an alternative proof of a consequence of work of Saeki, namely that…

A symplectic structure is canonically constructed on any manifold endowed with a topological linear k-system whose fibers carry suitable symplectic data. As a consequence, the classification theory for Lefschetz pencils in the context of…

This paper concerns the lattice counting problem for the mapping class group of a surface $S$ acting on Teichm\"uller space with the Teichm\"uller metric. In that problem the goal is to count the number of mapping classes that send a given…

We show that any 4-manifold, after surgery on a curve, admits an achiral Lefschetz fibration. In particular, we show that the connected sum of any simply connected 4-manifold with a 2-sphere bundle over the 2-sphere will admit an achiral…