Commutators, Lefschetz fibrations and the signatures of surface bundles (Q697821)

Examples of surface bundles over surfaces with non-zero signature have been known since Atiyah and, independently, Kodaira gave examples in the late 1960s. Such bundles necessarily have signature divisible by four, and in an attempt to organize these examples, one can study the function \(g_h(n)\), which is defined as the minimal genus of the base of a surface bundle with fiber genus \(h\), and signature \(4n\). The main theorems of this paper give improved estimates for \(g_h(n)\), by showing for every \(h\geq 3,\) (a) there is a surface bundle of genus \(h\) over a surface of genus \(9\) with signature \(4\); and, (b) there are surface bundles of fiber genus \(h\) over a surface of genus \(9\) with signature at least \(4(h-2)/3.\) The examples in the main theorems are constructed by means of a clever cut-and-paste construction, that of taking ``differences'' of Lefschetz fibrations with matching singular fibers. To do this, the authors first construct several interesting examples of Lefschetz fibrations to use as building blocks. The construction of these examples, described via their monodromies as elements in the mapping class group of their fiber surfaces, and the calculation of their signatures comprise the technical heart of this paper.