Surfaces in the complex projective plane and their mapping class groups (Q2571358)

Given an orientable surface \(F\) smoothly embedded in an orientable 4-manifold \(M\), one can ask which elements of the mapping class group \(\mathcal M_F\) of \(F\) can be realized by restrictions of orientation preserving diffeomorphisms of the ambient manifold \(M\). These elements form a subgroup \(\mathcal E(M,F) \subset \mathcal M_F\), which depends on the given embedding \(F \subset M\). The paper under review focuses on the case of \(M = \mathbb{CP}^2\). In particular, the author shows that \(\mathcal E(\mathbb{CP}^2,F)=\mathcal M_F\) when \(F\) is unknotted (meaning that \(F\) is the boundary of an embedded 3-dimensional 1-handlebody). The same equality is shown to hold if \(F\) is embedded in \(\mathbb{CP}^2\) as a non-singular plane curve \(K_d \subset \mathbb{CP}^2\) of degree \(d \leq 4\), while it is shown to fail for odd \(d\geq 5\). Then, the case of the embedded connected sum \(K_3 \# \Sigma\) is considered, where \(\Sigma \subset S^4\) is an unknotted surface of arbitrary genus. In this case the extendable diffeomorphisms are characterized as those which preserve a certain quadratic form on \(H_1(K_3 \# \Sigma;\mathbb Z_2)\) associated to the embedding \(K_3 \# \Sigma \subset \mathbb{CP}^2\). A system of generators of \(\mathcal E(\mathbb{CP}^2,K_3 \# \Sigma)\) is also provided.