Lefschetz fibrations on nonorientable 4-manifolds (Q2046745)

A \textit{Lefschetz fibration} (\textbf{LF}) is a smooth surjective map \(f\) from a closed oriented and smooth 4-manifold \(X\) to \(S^2\) that is a submersion everywhere except at finitely many critical points in \(X\) near which \(f\) can be written in orientation-preserving local complex coordinates of the form \(f(z_1, z_2) = z_1^2+z_2^2\). These fibrations are powerful tools in studying the geometry and topology of symplectic 4-manifolds. It was shown by \textit{S. K. Donaldson} [J. Differ. Geom. 53, No. 2, 205--236 (1999; Zbl 1040.53094)] and \textit{R. E. Gompf} and \textit{A. I. Stipsicz} in [4-manifolds and Kirby calculus. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (1999; Zbl 0933.57020)] that every closed symplectic manifold admits a Lefschetz pencil which can be blown up to obtain a LF and conversely that the total space of a LF admits a symplectic structure, respectively. The paper under review studies the case of Lefschetz fibrations on compact \textit{nonorientable} 4-manifolds bases of which are compact orientable surfaces, hence necessarily generating nonorientable surfaces as regular fibers. In the first result of the paper under review, the authors prove that every \textit{nonorientable} 4-dimensional handlebody \(W\) with no 3- and 4-handles admits a LF over the 2-disk whose regular fibers are nonorientable surfaces with boundary, a nonorientable analogue of a result by \textit{J. L. Harer} in [Pencils of curves on 4-manifolds. Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of California, Berkeley (1979)]. The proof of this result utilizes a method called \textit{``Harer's trick''} stabilizing the trivial LF \(D^2\times \Sigma \to D^2\), where \(\Sigma\) is the nonorientable fiber, twice. That operation results in the resolution of transverse double points in the projection of the embedding of the link consisting of attaching curves of the 2-handles onto \(\Sigma\), which in turn generates a nontrivial LF \(W \to D^2\) where \(W\) is obtained by attaching 2-handles to \(D^2 \times \Sigma\). As an immediate corollary of the main result above, the authors provide an alternative proof for the nonorientable analogue of a classical theorem by Alexander in \textit{J. W. Alexander II} [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 9, 93--95 (1923; JFM 49.0408.03)] that says every orientable closed 3-manifold admits an open book decomposition. The nonorientable analogue of this result was first proven by \textit{I. Berstein} and \textit{A. L. Edmonds} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 247, 87--123 (1979; Zbl 0359.55001)]. In addition to presenting an alternative proof to Bernstein and Edmond's result, the authors of the paper under review also present additional information about the monodromy, a product of Dehn twists, of the open book decomposition. The last result in this paper provides a relative trisection diagram of a 4-dimensional handlebody \(W\) with no 3- and 4-handles admitting a LF, which was first studied by \textit{N. A. Castro} in the case of a compact orientable 4-manifold admitting an (achiral) Lefschetz fibration over \(D^2\) in [Relative trisections of smooth 4-manifolds with boundary, Ph.D. thesis, University of Georgia (2016)]. Moreover, the authors prove that they can obtain a relative trisection diagram for a \textit{closed}, nonorientable, connected manifold \(X=W \cup V\) admitting a LF over \(S^2\) by utilizing the LFs on \(W\) and on \(V\) over \(D^2\) where \(\partial W=\partial V\) and the associated open books coincide.