Wrinkled fibrations on near-symplectic manifolds (Q1006127)

A broken fibration on a closed four manifold is a map to a closed surface with a finite set of Lefschetz singularities and a one-dimensional set of other (precisely defined) singularities. A wrinkled fibration on a closed four manifold is a map to a closed surface which is a broken fibration on the complement of a finite set of cusp singularities. The main results of the paper state that: (1) a wrinkled fibration is homotopic to a broken one by a homotopy supported near cusp singularities; (2) a broken fibration is homotopic to a wrinkled fibration with no Lefschetz singularities by a homotopy supported near Lefschetz singularities. The proof consists of a definition of certain basic moves and their careful analysis. As an application the author proves that an achiral broken Lefschetz fibration can be deformed into a broken Lefschetz fibration using the above moves. This disproves a conjecture of Gay and Kirby. The author also study the change of the near-symplectic geometry under the above moves.