The geography of symplectic 4-manifolds with divisible canonical class (Q1047583)

The geography problem involves finding, for any given pair of integers \((e, \sigma)\), a closed 4-manifold \(M\) with certain desired properties (e.g. irreducible, spin, satisfying conditions on \(\pi_1 M\), etc.) such that the Euler class \(e(M) =e\) and signature \(\sigma(M) =\sigma.\) In this paper, the author considers the geography problem for simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds \(M\) whose canonical class \(K_M\) is divisible by a given integer \(d >1.\) Examples are provided using two constructions, the first is the generalized fiber sum of symplectic manifolds due to B. Gompf, J. McCarthy and J. Wolfson, and the second is the generalized knot surgery of R. Fintushel and R. Stern. The author applies these methods to produce new examples of 4-manifolds admitting several symplectic structures that are inequivalent under deformation and self-diffeomorphism. Using branched coverings, the author constructs simply connected algebraic surfaces of general type with divisible canonical classes.