Related papers: Lefschetz pencils on a complex projective plane fr…

We show that every member of an infinite family of symplectic manifolds constructed by R. Inanc Baykur, Kenta Hayano, and Naoyuki Monden (arXiv:1903:02906) is diffeomorphic to an elliptic surface. As a result: (1) the symplectic Calabi-Yau…

We produce simply connected, minimal, symplectic Lefschetz fibrations realizing all the lattice points in the symplectic geography plane below the Noether line. This provides a symplectic extension of the classical works populating the…

This text is a set of lecture notes for a series of four talks given at I.P.A.M., Los Angeles, on March 18-20, 2003. The first lecture provides a quick overview of symplectic topology and its main tools: symplectic manifolds, almost-complex…

We provide a closed, simply connected, symplectic $6$-manifold having infinitely many codimension $2$ symplectic submanifolds. These are mutually homologous but homotopy inequivalent, and furthermore, they cannot admit complex structures.…

Bidouble covers $\pi : S \mapsto Q$ of the quadric Q are parametrized by connected families depending on four positive integers a,b,c,d. In the special case where b=d we call them abc-surfaces. Such a Galois covering $\pi$ admits a small…

We prove the Lefschetz hyperplane section theorem using a simpler machinery by making the observation that we can compose the Lefschetz Pencil with a Real Morse function to get a map from the variety to $\mathbb{R}$ which is "close" to…

We explicitly construct a genus-$3$ Lefschetz fibration over $\mathbb{S}^{2}$ whose total space is $\mathbb{T}^{2}\times \mathbb{S}^{2}\# 6\overline{\mathbb{C} P^{2}}$ using the monodromy of Matsumoto's genus-$2$ Lefschetz fibration. We…

Let $S$ be a smooth projective complex algebraic surface and $f\, :\, S\, \longrightarrow\, {\mathbb C}{\mathbb P}^2$ a finite map. Consider a pencil of hyperplane sections on ${\mathbb C}{\mathbb P}^2$ and pull it back to $S$. We address…

Questions of geography of various classes of $4$-manifolds have been a central motivating question in $4$-manifold topology. Baykur and Korkmaz asked which small, simply connected, minimal $4$-manifolds admit a genus $2$ Lefschetz…

The purpose of this note is to explain a combinatorial description of closed smooth oriented 4-manifolds in terms of positive Dehn twist factorizations of surface mapping classes, and further explore these connections. This is obtained via…

In this paper we study the problem of classifying pencils of curves of degree $d$ in $\mathbb{P}^2$ using geometric invariant theory. We consider the action of $SL(3)$ and we relate the stability of a pencil to the stability of its…

In this manuscript we prove that if two cuspidal plane curves have equivalent braid monodromy factorizations, then they are smoothly isotopic in the plane. As a consequence of this and the Chisini conjecture, we obtain that if two…

We describe symplectic mapping class relations between products of positive Dehn twists along Lagrangian spheres in Weinstein $4$-manifolds, all of which are affine $\mathbb{C}$ varieties. The relations are obtained by applying…

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 consider relatively minimal fibrations of curves of genus two on rational surfaces whose Picard numbers are not maximal. By birational morphisms, such fibred surfaces are interpreted as pencils of plane curves. We show that only four are…

The topology of symplectic 4-manifolds is related to that of singular plane curves via the concept of branched covers. Thus, various classification problems concerning symplectic 4-manifolds can be reformulated as questions about singular…

We study pencils of plane cubics with only one base point and general member smooth, giving a complete classification. Under the additional hypothesis that all members are irreducible, we prove that there exists a unique non-isotrivial…

We prove a general Zariski-van Kampen-Lefschetz type theorem for higher homotopy groups of generic and nongeneric pencils on singular open complex spaces.

The space of monic squarefree complex polynomials has a stratification according to the multiplicities of the critical points. We introduce a method to study these strata by way of the infinite-area translation surface associated to the…

To a symplectic Lefschetz pencil on a monotone symplectic manifold, we associate an algebraic structure, which is a pencil of categories in the sense of noncommutative geometry. One fibre of this "noncommutative pencil" is related to the…