From automorphisms of Riemann surfaces to smooth \(4\)-manifolds (Q1996237)

Let \(\Sigma_{g}\) denote a compact smooth oriented real 2-dimensional manifold of genus \(g\) without boundary. In this paper, the authors construct surface bundles over surfaces with positive signatures by means of a general branched covering method. In the last two sections, the authors give two applications: One of them is related to the minimal base genus problem. More precisely, they prove the upper bound formula \(G_f \leq \frac{5.6}{f-25}\) for all \(f \geq 44\), that covers all but finitely many cases. Here, \(G_f = \lim_{n \to \infty} \frac{b(f,n)}{n}\), where the minimal base genus function \(b(f,n) =\text{ min }\{g \mid \text{there is a } \Sigma_{f}\text{-bundle } X \to \Sigma_{g}\text{ with } \sigma(X)=4n\}\). Also, this formula gives a new smaller upper bound for \(G_f\) for all \(f \geq 363\) and all even \(f \geq 348\). The second application is to the spin geography problem. More specifically, for \(p \geq 0\) an even integer, the authors give the upper bound \(\Lambda_p \leq 5 n^4 - n^2 + 4n -1-10p\), if \(n \geq 3\) is an odd integer satisfying \(p \leq \frac{1}{6} (n^4 - n^2)-2\), where \(\Lambda_p\) is the smallest positive odd integer such that the symmetric bilinear form \(pE_8 \oplus qH\) has the \(\infty^2\)-property for every odd integer \(q \geq \Lambda_p\).