Related papers: Surface bundles over surfaces with a fixed signatu…

Singular fibrations generalize achiral Lefschetz fibrations of 4-manifolds over surfaces while sharing some of their properties. For instance, relatively minimal singular fibrations are determined by their monodromy. We explain how to…

For each d>=2, the mapping class group for plane curves of degree d will be defined and it is proved that there exists uniquely the Meyer function on this group. In the case of d=4, using our Meyer function, we can define the local…

Let $X^4$ and $Y^4$ be smooth manifolds and $f: X\to Y$ a branched cover with branching set $B$. Classically, if $B$ is smoothly embedded in $Y$, the signature $\sigma(X)$ can be computed from data about $Y$, $B$ and the local degrees of…

We obtain new lower bounds of the minimal genus of a locally flat surface representing a 2-dimensional homology class in a topological 4-manifold with boundary, using the von Neumann-Cheeger-Gromov $\rho$-invariant. As an application our…

Let $X$ be a closed indefinite $4$-manifold with $b_+(X) = 3 \; ({\rm mod} \; 4)$ and with non-vanishing mod $2$ Seiberg--Witten invariants. We prove a new lower bound on the genus of a properly embedded surface in $X \setminus B^4$…

We investigate group-theoretic "signatures" of odd cycles of a graph, and their connections to topological obstructions to 3-colourability. In the case of signatures derived from free groups, we prove that the existence of an odd cycle with…

In this paper, we give lower bounds for the homology of the fibers of a map to a manifold. Using new sheaf theoretic methods, we show that these lower bounds persist over whole open sets of the manifold, and that they are stable under…

M. Kontsevich constructed universal characteristic classes of smooth bundles with fiber a framed odd-dimensional integral homology sphere. In dimension 3, they are known to give a universal finite type invariants of homology 3-spheres.…

We study geometric properties of characteristic classes of surfaces bundles. In particular, we show that oriented surface bundles over bases with amenable fundamental groups and dimension at least 2 have trivial simplicial volume. We show…

Given an open subset U of a projective curve Y and a smooth family f:V-->U of curves, with semi-stable reduction over Y, we show that for a sub variation of Hodge structures of rank >2 the Arakelov inequality must be strict. For families of…

A trisection of a smooth, closed, oriented 4-manifold is a decomposition into three 4-dimensional 1-handlebodies meeting pairwise in 3-dimensional 1-handlebodies, with triple intersection a closed surface. The fundamental groups of the…

Usually bundle gerbes are considered as objects of a 2-groupoid, whose 1-morphisms, called stable isomorphisms, are all invertible. I introduce new 1-morphisms which include stable isomorphisms, trivializations and bundle gerbe modules.…

A smooth five-dimensional s-cobordism becomes a smooth product if stabilized by a finite number n of $S^2xS^2x[0,1]$'s. We show that for amenable fundamental groups, the minimal n is subextensive in covers, i.e., n(cover)/index(cover) has…

We construct models of involution surface bundles over algebraic surfaces, degenerating over normal crossing divisors, and with controlled singularities of the total space.

The paper is partially withdrawn: in its current form, Lemma 2.3 is false, so that our proof of Theorem A and Proposition B has an important gap. We were unable to fix it yet. Any help is most welcome. We prove that the restriction of…

We give a new criterion for when a resolution of a surface of general type with canonical singularities has big cotangent bundle and a new lower bound for the values of $d$ for which there is a surface with big cotangent bundle that is…

For an embedded singly periodic minimal surface M with genus bigger than or equal to 4 and annular ends, some weak symmetry hypotheses imply its congruence with one of the Hoffman-Wohlgemuth examples. We give a very geometrical proof of…

We exhibit new examples of double Kodaira fibrations by using finite Galois covers of a product $\Sigma_b \times \Sigma_b$, where $\Sigma_b$ is a smooth projective curve of genus $b \geq 2$. Each cover is obtained by providing an explicit…

We study the minimal genus problem for some smooth four-manifolds.

We prove that all smooth sphere bundles that admit fiberwise 1/4-pinched metrics are induced bundles of vector bundles, so their structure groups reduce from the diffeomorphism group of the sphere to the orthogonal group. This result…