Finite, fiber- and orientation-preserving group actions on totally orientable Seifert manifolds (Q2272538)

The author considers fiber preserving finite group actions on closed orientable Seifert manifolds, which also preserve their orientations. In particular, the highlight of this article is that the author establishes a method of constructing such actions. It is shown that if an action satisfies certain assumptions including the obstruction class of a manifold, then the action can be derived by means of this construction method. Formally speaking, the following statement is the main result of this article. Theorem. Let \(M\) be a closed, compact and orientable Seifert 3-manifold that fibers over an orientable closed base space. Let \(\varphi: G \rightarrow \mathrm{Diff}_+^{fp}(M)\) be a finite group acting on \(M\) such that the obstruction class can be expressed as \(b = \Sigma_{i=1}^m(b_i \cdot \# Orb_\varphi(\alpha_i))\) for a collection of fibers \(\{\alpha_1, \dots, \alpha_m\}\) and integers \(\{b_1, \dots, b_m\}\), where \(\# Orb_\varphi(\alpha_i)\) indicates the orbit number of a fiber \(\alpha_i\). Then, \(\varphi\) is an extended product action. A key to establish the result is to remove each regular neighborhood of the exceptional fibers, call it \(V_i\), from \(M\). In other words, the manifold \(M\) is decomposed into a trivially fibered space \(\hat{M} = S^1 \times F\) and \(X = V_1 \cup V_2 \cup \dots \cup V_n\). Note that \(\partial \hat{M} = \partial X\) is a disjoint union of tori since \(V_i\) is homeomorphic to a solid torus. In the meantime, let us check out an article by \textit{W. H. Meeks III} and \textit{P. Scott} in [Invent. Math. 86, 287--346 (1986; Zbl 0626.57006)]. Consider a compact orientable surface \(F\) with \(\partial F \neq \emptyset\) and let \(\hat{M} = S^1 \times F\). Suppose \(G\) is a finite group acting smoothly on \(\hat{M}\) so as to preserve the product structure on \(\partial M\). Then, Theorem 2.3 in [loc. cit.] says \(\hat{M}\) possesses a \(G\)-invariant product structure which agrees with the original product structure on \(\partial \hat{M}\). The author refines this result to obtain the above theorem.