On symplectic 4-manifolds with prescribed fundamental group (Q2468437)

In this paper, Baldridge and Kirk bring together a number of interesting observations and facts to study the minimum of either the Euler characteristic (\(\chi\)) or holomorphic Euler characteristic (\(\frac{\chi+\sigma}{4}\)) or square of the canonical class (\(2\chi+3\sigma\)) taken over all symplectic \(4\)-manifolds with fixed fundamental group \(G\). This is an interesting take on the geography problem for smooth \(4\)-manifolds. After a first set of observations setting the stage, they analyze the function \(f(b):=\text{inf}\{\chi(X)+b\sigma(X)\mid X\text{ symplectic }, \pi_1(X)=G\}\). They show that this is a concave piecewise linear function and demonstrate what is special about \(b=0\), \(b=1\) and \(b=3/2\). They next get an upper bound on the size of this in terms of the number of generators and relations of a presentation of the group and a lower bound in terms of the Betti numbers of the group. The lower bound comes from algebraic topology and the upper bound comes from careful inspection of \textit{R. E. Gompf}'s proof that every finitely presented group is the fundamental group of some \(4\)-manifold [Ann. Math. (2) 142, No.3, 527-595 (1995; Zbl 0849.53027)]. (They replace the K3 with \(S^1\times M\) for some fibered \(3\)-manifold to get better bounds. They then consider various special classes of groups and employ a variety of techniques to obtain better estimates and in some cases exact answers.)