Symplectically aspherical manifolds with nontrivial \(\pi_2\) (Q1295909)

The author constructs families of closed, symplectic 4-manifolds for which spherical classes generate arbitrarily large subspaces in 2-homology and both the first Chern class and cohomology class of the symplectic form vanish on all spherical classes. Such families are produced when each manifold is a Kähler manifold and when none is homotopy equivalent to a Kähler manifold. The construction is based on symplectic branched coverings. The author also shows that the cohomology class of the symplectic form can pair trivially with all spherical classes when the Chern class pairs nontrivially, which proves independence of these conditions.