Families of Jacobian manifolds and characteristic classes of surface bundles. I (Q1120155)

In our previous work [Invent. Math. 90, 551-577 (1987; Zbl 0608.57020)] we have defined the notion of characteristic classes of surface bundles, which are characteristic classes for differentiable fibre bundles whose fibres are closed oriented surfaces [see also \textit{E. Y. Miller}, J. Differ. Geom. 24, 1-14 (1986; Zbl 0618.57005)] and \textit{D. Mumford} [Arithmetic and geometry, Pap. dedic. I. R. Shafarevich, Vol. II: Geometry, Prog. Math. 36, 271-328 (1983; Zbl 0554.14008)]. In this paper it is shown that one can derive new relations between these characteristic classes by considering a canonical embedding of a given surface bundle with a cross section to its associated family of Jacobian manifolds. As a key step of the proof of the above results, the first (co)homology groups of the mapping class groups of orientable surfaces (of various kinds) with coefficients in the homology of the surfaces are determined together with an explicit construction of their generators. These will be used in an essential way in the author's subsequent papers, namely a generalization of the results of the present paper mentioned above to the case of surface bundles without cross sections [Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 105, 79-101 (1989)] and an interpretation of the Casson invariant for homology 3-spheres as the secondary invariant associated with the first characteristic class of surface bundles (to appear in Topology).