A construction of surface bundles over surfaces with non-zero signature (Q1282243)

A \(\Sigma_h\)-bundle over \(\Sigma_g\) (also called a surface bundle over a surface) is known to be a fiber bundle \(\xi= (E,\Sigma_g,p, \Sigma_h,\text{Diff}_+ \Sigma_h)\) over the closed oriented surface \(\Sigma_g\) of genus \(g\), with total space \(E\), fiber consisting of the closed oriented surface \(\Sigma_h\) of genus \(h\), projection \(p:E\to \Sigma_g\) and structure group containing all orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of \(\Sigma_h\) with \({\mathcal C}^\infty\)-topology. \textit{K. Kodaira} [J. Anal. Math. 19, 207-215 (1967; Zbl 0172.37901)] and \textit{M. F. Atiyah} [The signature of fibre-bundles, in `Global analysis, Papers in Honor of K. Kodaira' 73-84 (1969; Zbl 0193.52302)] gave examples of surface bundles over surfaces such that the signature \(\tau(E)\) of the total space \(E\) is non-zero. Moreover, \textit{W. Meyer} [Die Signatur von lokalen Koeffizientensystemen und Faserbündeln, Bonn. Math. Schr. 53 (1972; Zbl 0243.58004); Math. Ann. 201, 239-264 (1973; Zbl 0241.55019)] showed that for every \(h\geq 3\) and every \(n\in\mathbb{Z}\), there exist an integer \(g\geq 0\) and a \(\Sigma_h\)-bundle over \(\Sigma_g\) such that \(\tau(E)=4n\). The present paper uses Meyer's work about signature cocycle and \textit{B. Wajnryb}'s presentation [Isr. J. Math. 45, 157-174 (1983; Zbl 0533.57002)] of the mapping class group \({\mathcal M}_h\) of \(\Sigma_h\) in order to provide an interesting estimation of the minimum value \(g(h,n)\) of the above genus \(g\): \[ {| n|\over h-1}+1\leq g(h,n)\leq 111| n|. \]