Lefschetz fibrations on compact Stein surfaces (Q1601281)

Recently, \textit{A. Loi} and \textit{R. Piergallini} [Invent. Math. 143, 325-348 (2001; Zbl 0983.32027)] have established the existence of a positive allowable Lefschetz fibration on a compact Stein surface using techniques from the theory of branched coverings. By an explicit construction of the vanishing cycles of the Lefschetz fibration, the authors of the present paper give a new appealing geometric proof of the result of Loi and Piergallini. In fact, they obtain a direct identification of compact Stein surfaces on the one hand with positive allowable Lefschetz fibrations over the 2-disc on the other hand, and in the process they associate to every compact Stein surface infinitely many pairwise nonequivalent such Lefschetz fibrations.