arXiv research

Authors construct symplectic Lefschetz pencils on complex projective plane.

Classifies genus-1 holomorphic Lefschetz pencils up to smooth isomorphism.

In this paper we discuss topological properties of holomorphic Lefschetz pencils on the four-torus. Relying on the theory of moduli spaces of polarized abelian surfaces, we first prove that, under some mild assumption, the (smooth) isomorphism class of a holomorphic Lefschetz pencil on the four-torus is uniquely determ…

The study constructs and analyzes new symplectic 4-manifolds from hyperelliptic Lefschetz fibrations.

The study finds infinitely many Lefschetz pencils on ruled surfaces with negative Euler characteristic.

Elliptic surfaces have unique Lefschetz pencils and Calabi-Yau diffeomorphisms.

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 Lefschetz fibration has more than one supporting minimal Lefschetz pencils. We a…

Donaldson showed that every closed symplectic 4-manifold can be given the structure of a topological Lefschetz pencil. Gay and Kirby showed that every closed 4-manifold has a trisection. In this paper we relate these two structure theorems, showing how to construct a trisection directly from a topological Lefschetz pen…

In this paper, given a finitely presented group $Γ$, we provide the explicit monodromy of a Lefschetz fibration with $(-1)$-sections whose total space has fundamental group $Γ$ by applying "twisted substitutions" to that of the Lefschetz fibration constructed by Cadavid and independently Korkmaz. Consequently, we obtai…

We study some asymptotic properties of the sequences of symplectic Lefschetz pencils constructed by Donaldson. In particular we prove that the vanishing spheres of these pencils are, for large degree, conjugated under the action of the symplectomorphism group of the fiber. This implies the non-existence of homologicall…

In this short note, we give an explicit construction of inequivalent Lefschetz pencils and fibrations of same genera on blow-ups of all rational and ruled surfaces. This complements our earlier results, concluding that every symplectic 4-manifold, after sufficiently many blow-ups, admits inequivalent Lefschetz pencils …

In this article, we characterize isomorphism classes of Lefschetz fibrations with multisections via their monodromy factorizations. We prove that two Lefschetz fibrations with multisections are isomorphic if and only if their monodromy factorizations in the relevant mapping class groups are related to each other by a f…

We give an asymptotic probabilistic real Riemann-Hurwitz formula computing the expected real ramification index of a random covering over the Riemann sphere. More generally, we study the asymptotic expected number and distribution of critical points of a random real Lefschetz pencil over a smooth real algebraic variety…

We initiate a study of positive multisections of Lefschetz fibrations via positive factorizations in framed mapping class groups of surfaces. Using our methods, one can effectively capture various interesting symplectic surfaces in symplectic 4-manifolds as multisections, such as Seiberg-Witten basic classes and except…

We define the concept of Lefschetz contact pencil and we show the existence of such structures on any contact manifold. The main idea of the proof is a generalization of the Donaldson arguments used in the symplectic case. We will analyze some of the applications of such existence theorem for the topology of approximat…

We calculate the monodromies of the canonical Lefschetz pencils on a pair of homeomorphic Horikawa surfaces. We show in particular that the (pluri)canonical pencils on these surfaces have the same monodromy groups, and are related by a "partial twisting" operation.

Given a Lagrangian submanifold in a symplectic manifold and a Morse function on the submanifold, we show that there is an isotopic Morse function and a symplectic Lefschetz pencil on the manifold extending the Morse function to the whole manifold. From this construction we define a sequence of symplectic invariants cla…

This set of lectures aims to give an overview of Donaldson's theory of linear systems on symplectic manifolds and the algebraic and geometric invariants to which they give rise. After collecting some of the relevant background, we discuss topological, algebraic and symplectic viewpoints on Lefschetz pencils and branche…

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 transversely). Our main result asserts that, up to blowups, every near-symplectic 4-man…

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 pencil on a simply-connected minimal surface of general type we partially calculat…

In this article, we study the maximal length of positive Dehn twist factorizations of surface mapping classes. In connection to fundamental questions regarding the uniform topology of symplectic 4-manifolds and Stein fillings of contact 3-manifolds coming from the topology of supporting Lefschetz pencils and open books…

Researchers study rank two theories with eight supercharges using Lefschetz pencils.

We prove upper bounds for the number of critical points in semistable symplectic Lefschetz fibrations. We also obtain a new lower bound for the number of nonseparting vanishing cycles in Lefschetz pencils, and reprove the known lower bounds for the commutator lengths of Dehn twists.

We explicitly produce symplectic genus-3 Lefschetz pencils (with base points), whose total spaces are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to rational surfaces CP^2 # p (-CP^2) for p= 7, 8, 9. We then give a new construction of an infinite family of symplectic Calabi-Yau surfaces with first Betti number b_1=2,3, along wi…

Every compact symplectic 4-manifold can be realized as a branched cover of the complex projective plane branched along a symplectic curve with cusp and node singularities; the covering map is induced by a triple of sections of a "very ample" line bundle. In this paper, we give an explicit formula describing the behavio…

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 surfaces from complex surfaces of general type, as well as from rational and ruled s…

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 Lefschetz fibration. We also show these surgered manifolds admit near-symplectic s…

Here we show that every compact smooth 4-manifold X has a structure of a Broken Lefschetz Fibration (BLF in short). Furthermore, if b_{2}^{+}(X)> 0 then it also has a Broken Lefschetz Pencil structure (BLP) with nonempty base locus. This imroves a Theorem of Auroux, Donaldson and Katzarkov, and our proof is topological…

Constructs symplectic 6-manifolds using bifibration structures.

We prove that any symplectic 4-manifold which is not a rational or ruled surface, after sufficiently many blow-ups, admits an arbitrary number of nonisomorphic Lefschetz fibrations of the same genus which cannot be obtained from one another via Luttinger surgeries. This generalizes results of Park and Yun who construct…

We construct two types of non-holomorphic Lefschetz fibrations over $S^2$ with $(-1)$-sections ---hence, they are fiber sum indecomposable--- by giving the corresponding positive relators. One type of the two does not satisfy the slope inequality (a necessary condition for a fibration to be holomorphic) and has a simpl…

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 F is a fiber. Moreover, we can arrange it so that there is only one Lefschetz c…

We describe a simplification of Donaldson's arguments for the construction of symplectic hypersurfaces or Lefschetz pencils that makes it possible to avoid any reference to Yomdin's work on the complexity of real algebraic sets.

The topology of broken Lefschetz fibrations is studied by means of handle decompositions. We consider a slight generalization of round handles, and describe the handle diagrams for all that appear in dimension four. We establish simplified handlebody and monodromy representations for a certain subclass of broken Lefsch…

In this paper, we provide an alternative proof of Donaldson's almost-holomorphic section theorem and symplectic Lefschetz pencil theorem, through constructions of certain special kind of Donaldson-type sections of the line bundle based on properties of exponential sums.

We find a new relation among right-handed Dehn twists in the mapping class group of a $k$-holed torus for $4 \leq k \leq 9$. This relation induces an elliptic Lefschetz pencil structure on the four-manifold \cp $#(9-k)$ \cpb $$ with $k$ base points and twelve singular fibers. By blowing up the base points we get an el…

After reviewing recent results on symplectic Lefschetz pencils and symplectic branched covers of CP^2, we describe a new construction of maps from symplectic manifolds of any dimension to CP^2 and the associated monodromy invariants. We also show that a dimensional induction process makes it possible to describe any co…

These notes are intended to be an introduction to the use of approximately holomorphic techniques in almost contact and contact geometry. We develop the setup of the approximately holomorphic geometry. Once done, we sketch the existence of the two main geometric decompositions available for an almost contact or contact…

We present explicit algorithms for simplifying the topology of indefinite fibrations on 4-manifolds, which include broken Lefschetz fibrations and indefinite Morse 2-functions. The algorithms consist of sequences of moves, which modify indefinite fibrations in smooth 1-parameter families. In particular, given an arbitr…

A proof of non-existence of Lagrangian embeddings of the Klein bottle K in \CP^2 is given. We exploit the existence of a special embedding of K in a symplectic Lefschetz pencil on \CP^2 and study its monodromy. As the main technical tool, we develop the theory of mapping class groups, considered as quotients of special…

In this paper, we study the analogue of the Shafarevich conjecture for polarized Calabi-Yau varieties. We use variations of Hodge structures and Higgs bundles to establish a criterion for the {\it rigidity} of families. We then apply the criterion to obtain that some important and typical families of Calabi-Yau varieti…

We present existence results for certain singular 2-dimensional foliations on 4-manifolds. The singularities can be chosen to be simple, e.g. the same as those that appear in Lefschetz pencils. There seems to be a wealth of such creatures on most 4-manifolds. In certain cases, one can prescribe surfaces to be transvers…

In this paper we continue to study equivariant pencil liftings and differential operators on the algebra of densities. We emphasize the role that the geometry of the extended manifold plays. Firstly we consider basic examples. We give a projective line of diff($M$)-equivariant pencil liftings for first order operators,…

We prove that there exists no a priori bound on the Euler characteristic of a closed symplectic 4-manifold coming solely from the genus of a compatible Lefschetz pencil on it, nor is there a similar bound for Stein fillings of a contact 3-manifold coming from the genus of a compatible open book --- except possibly for …

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 structures, pseudo-holomorphic curves, Gromov-Witten invariants and Floer homol…

Study Frobenius pencils and compatible non-homogeneous Poisson structures.

A Poisson pencil is called flat if all brackets of the pencil can be simultaneously locally brought to a constant form. Given a Poisson pencil on a 3-manifold, we study under which conditions it is flat. Since the works of Gelfand and Zakharevich, it is known that a pencil is flat if and only if the associated Veronese…

The structure of a Frobenius manifold encodes the geometry associated with a flat pencil of metrics. However, as shown in the authors' earlier work, much of the structure comes from the compatibility properties of the pencil rather than from the flatness of the pencil itself. In this paper conformally flat pencils of m…