Partial fiber sum decompositions and signatures of Lefschetz fibrations (Q2291586)

After finitely many blow-ups, every closed symplectic 4-manifold admits a Lefschetz fibration over \(S^2\). \textit{B. Ozbagci} [Pac. J. Math. 202, No. 1, 99--118 (2002; Zbl 1053.57013)] described an algorithm for computing the signature of the total space of a Lefschetz fibration over \(S^2\) or \(D^2\) with closed fibers. The input for this is a factorization of the monodromy into a product of Dehn twists. The authors give a reformulation of Ozbagci's algorithm which is easier to implement and works for Lefschetz fibrations over \(D^2\) with fibers that are allowed to have boundary. This is done by giving an alternative method for computing the local signatures at singular fibers. The authors also give a formula for the signature of branched covers where the branched loci are regular fibers. As an application for any \(g\geq 1, b\geq 1\) and \(n>0\), a Lefschetz fibration over \(D^2\) with fiber a surface of genus \(g\) and \(b\) boundary components is constructed such that the total space has signature \(n\). Here the constructed examples have \(3n\) singular fibers. It remains an open question whether it is possible to construct Leftschetz fibrations over \(D^2\) with signature \(n>0\) that have less than \(3n\) singular fibers.