Pair of pants decomposition of 4-manifolds (Q2398826)

It is well-known that every surface of genus \(g\geq 2\) decomposes into pairs of pants. In [\textit{G. Mikhalkin}, Topology 43, No. 5, 1035--1065 (2004; Zbl 1065.14056)] this notion was generalized to all even dimensions as follows. A \textit{\(2n\)-dimensional pair of pants} is defined to be the manifold obtained by removing open regular neighborhoods of \(n+2\) generic hyperplanes from \(\mathbb{CP}^n\). In the case \(n=1\) this yields \(\mathbb{CP}^1\) with three open balls removed, hence the usual pair of pants. The boundary of a pair of pants is naturally stratified into circle fibrations. Mikhalkin defined a pair of pants decomposition as a decomposition into pieces where an appropriate collapse of these circles is allowed. With this notion for example \(S^2\) has a decomposition into a single pair of pants, where each boundary circle is collapsed to a point. Mikhalkin proved that every smooth complex hypersurface in \(\mathbb{CP}^{n+1}\) decomposes into pairs of pants. In this paper the authors study which smooth closed \(4\)-manifolds that are not complex projective hypersurfaces can be decomposed into pairs of pants. They give explicit decompositions for some simple classes of closed \(4\)-manifolds and also show that every finitely presented group is the fundamental group of a closed \(4\)-manifold that decomposes into pairs of pants.