Related papers: Lefschetz fibrations with arbitrary signature

For each g > 2 and h > 1, we explicitly construct (1) fiber sum indecomposable relatively minimal genus g Lefschetz fibrations over genus h surfaces whose monodromies lie in the Torelli group, (2) fiber sum indecomposable genus g surface…

We provide a complete set of moves relating any two Lefschetz fibrations over the disk having as their total space the same 4-dimensional 2-handlebody up to 2-equivalence. As a consequence, we also obtain moves relating diffeomorphic…

In this paper we construct six-dimensional compact non-K\"ahler Hamiltonian circle manifolds which satisfy the strong Lefschetz property themselves but nevertheless have a non-Lefschetz symplectic quotient. This provides the first known…

In this paper, given a finitely presented group $\Gamma$, we provide the explicit monodromy of a Lefschetz fibration with $(-1)$-sections whose total space has fundamental group $\Gamma$ by applying "twisted substitutions" to that of the…

We give a maximal set of disjoint $(-1)$-sections of the well-known Lefschetz fibration constructed by Matsumoto, Cadavid and Korkmaz. In fact, we obtain several such sets for a fixed genus, which implies that the Matsumoto-Cadavid-Korkmaz…

We construct symplectic surface bundles over surfaces with positive signatures for all but 18 possible pairs of fiber and base genera. Meanwhile, we determine the commutator lengths of a few new mapping classes.

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.…

There are two themes in the present paper. The first one is spelled out in the title, and is inspired by an attempt to find an analogue of Hersch-Yang-Yau estimate for $lambda_1$ of surfaces in symplectic category. In particular we prove…

Loi-Piergallini, Akbulut-Ozbagci, and Akbulut-Arikan showed that every compact Stein surface admits a positive allowable Lefschetz fibration over the disk $D^2$ with bounded fibers (PALF in short), and they provided constructions of PALF's…

We show that there exists an admissible nonorientable genus $g$ Lefschetz fibration with only one singular fiber over a closed orientable surface of genus $h$ if and only if $g \geq 4$ and $h \geq 1$.

This paper shows that there are symplectic four-manifolds M with the following property: a single isotopy class of smooth embedded two-spheres in M contains infinitely many Lagrangian submanifolds, no two of which are isotopic as Lagrangian…

We introduce the concept of s-formal minimal model as an extension of formality. We prove that any orientable compact manifold M, of dimension 2n or (2n-1), is formal if and only if M is (n-1)-formal. The formality and the hard Lefschetz…

We study a symplectic surgery operation we call unchaining, which effectively reduces the second Betti number and the symplectic Kodaira dimension at the same time. Using unchaining, we give novel constructions of symplectic Calabi-Yau…

We prove an upper bound for the first Betti number of a nontrivial genus-$g$ Lefschetz fibration. We also show that if the monodromy of a Lefschetz fibration is transitive with respect to the mapping class group, the Lefschetz fibration is…

We construct simply connected, minimal, symplectic 4-manifolds with exotic smooth structures and each with one Seiberg-Witten basic class up to sign, on the Noether line and between the Noether and half Noether lines by star surgeries…

We study some symplectic geometric aspects of rationally connected 4-folds. As a corollary, we prove that any smooth projective 4-fold symplectic deformation equivalent to a Fano 4-fold of pseudo-index at least 2 or a rationally connected…

Let M be either CP^2#3CP^2bar or 3CP^2#5CP^2bar. We construct the first example of a simply-connected symplectic 4-manifold that is homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to M.

In a pair of papers, we construct invariants for smooth four-manifolds equipped with `broken fibrations' - the singular Lefschetz fibrations of Auroux, Donaldson and Katzarkov - generalising the Donaldson-Smith invariants for Lefschetz…

The signature of a surface bundle over a surface is known to be divisible by 4. It is also known that the signature vanishes if the fiber genus is less than or equal to 2 or the base genus is less than or equal to 1. In this article, we…

Let M be a closed oriented smooth 4-manifold admitting symplectic structures. If M is minimal and has b^+=1, we prove that there is a unique symplectic canonical class up to sign, and any real second cohomology class of positive square is…