Periodicity of branched cyclic covers of manifolds with open book decompositions (Q1059306)

The author studies branched cyclic covers of manifolds with open book decompositions. If the manifold M has odd dimension \(2n+1\) and the page F has the homotopy type of a CW-complex of dimension n, then the homology of F is determined by that of M and vice versa except in the middle dimension, where there is a four term exact sequence involving the variation homomorphism. With this sequence branched cyclic covers are studied. If the eigenvalues of the monodromy are d-th roots of unity for some d, then the rational homology of the branched covers \(M^ k\) and \(M^{k+d}\) are the same; there is periodicity for the integral homology if and only if \(Var(h^ d)=0\). If M is (n-1)-connected and bounds a parallelizable manifold, something can be said on the diffeomorphism type of the \(M^ k:\) for odd \(n=1\), 3 or 7 there is homeomorphism periodicity with period d and diffeomorphism periodicity with period a multiple of d; for even n it can be proved that there is homeomorphism periodicity with period 2d, while the period for diffeomorphism does not exceed 4d. The paper closes with some examples of open book decompositions obtained from smoothings of singularities.