Related papers: Positive factorizations of mapping classes

In \cite{AP3, AHP}, the first author and his collaborators constructed the irreducible symplectic $4$-manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to $(2n-1){\mathbb{CP}}^{2}\#(2n-1)\overline{\mathbb{CP}}^{2}$ for each integer $n…

Let M be a smooth 4-manifold which admits a genus g Lefschetz fibration over D^2 or S^2. We develop a technique to compute the signature of M using the global monodromy of this fibration.

We find a characterization for Fano 4-folds $X$ with Lefschetz defect $\delta_{X}=3$: besides the product of two del Pezzo surfaces, they correspond to varieties admitting a conic bundle structure $f\colon X\to Y$ with…

Let M denote the total space of a Lefschetz fibration, obtained by blowing up a Lefschetz pencil on an algebraic surface. We consider the n-fold fibre sum M(n), generalizing the construction of the elliptic surfaces E(n). For a Lefschetz…

We initiate the study of exotic Dehn twists along 3-manifolds $\neq S^3$ inside $4$-manifolds, which produces the first known examples of exotic diffeomorphisms of contractible 4-manifolds, more generally of definite 4-manifolds, and exotic…

We give a possible generalization of Lutz twist to all dimensions. This reproves the fact that every contact manifold can be given a non-fillable contact structure and also shows great flexibility in the manifolds that can be realized as…

We show that for all $n \ge 3$, any $(2n+1)$-dimensional manifold that admits a tight contact structure, also admits a tight but non-fillable contact structure, in the same almost contact class. For $n=2$, we obtain the same result,…

In this short note we construct examples of open books for 3-manifolds that show that arbitrarily high twisting of the monodromy of the open book does not guarantee maximality of the Euler characteristic of the pages among the open books…

In this paper we study exceptional Dehn fillings on hyperbolic knot manifolds which contain an essential once-punctured torus. Let $M$ be such a knot manifold and let $\beta$ be the boundary slope of such an essential once-punctured torus.…

We define symplectic fractional twists, which generalize Dehn twists, and use these in open books to investigate contact structures. The resulting contact structures are invariant under a circle action, and share several similarities with…

A positive Dehn twist product for a $\mathbb{Z}_3$ action with $g+2$ fixed points on the 2-dimensional closed, compact, oriented surface $\Sigma_g$ is presented. The homeomorphism invariants of the resulting symplectic 4-manifolds are…

We develop the Lefschetz fixed-point theory for noncompact manifolds of bounded geometry and uniformly continuous maps. Specifically, we define the uniform Lefschetz class $\mathscr{L}(f)$ of a uniformly continuous map $f\colon M\to M$ of a…

We construct infinite families of non-simply connected locally conformally flat (LCF) 4-manifolds realizing rich topological types. These manifolds have strictly negative scalar curvature and the underlying topological 4-manifolds do not…

We present several structural results on closed, nonorientable, smooth $4$--manifolds, extending analogous results and machinery for the orientable case. We prove the existence of simplified broken Lefschetz fibrations and simplified…

Using theorems of Eliashberg and McDuff, Etnyre [Et] proved that the intersection form of a symplectic filling of a contact 3-manifold supported by planar open book is negative definite. In this paper, we prove a signature formula for…

We describe the action of the mapping class group $M(g,n)$ on the fundamental group of $T_{g,n}$, a compact orientable topological surface of positive genus $g$ with $n$ marked points. This is achieved by computing the image of the…

We apply ideas from conformal field theory to study symplectic four-manifolds, by using modular functors to "linearise" Lefschetz fibrations. In Chern-Simons theory this leads to the study of parabolic vector bundles of conformal blocks.…

In his seminal work on Teichm\"uller spaces (\cite{Th98}), Thurston introduced the maximal stretch for a pair of hyperbolic metrics on a closed surface of genus $\geq 2$ and showed that the logarithm of this quantity induces an asymmetric…

We prove that the image of the mapping class group by the representations arising in the SU(2)-TQFT is infinite, provided that the genus is bigger than 2 and the level r of the theory is different from 2,3,4,6. In particular the quotient of…

The mapping class group of a surface with one boundary component admits numerous interesting representations including as a group of automorphisms of a free group and as a group of symplectic transformations. Insofar as the mapping class…