Maximally irregularly fibred surfaces of general type (Q2575167)

Let \(f: X \to B\) be a fibration of an algebraic surface \(X\) over a curve \(B\). If \(b\) denotes the genus of the base \(B\) and \(g\) the genus of a general fibre \(F\), the irregularity \(q\) of \(X\) is subject to \(b\leq q \leq b+g\). If \(q=b+g\), the fibration is trivial, i.e. the surface \(X\) is birational to the product \(B \times F\). The author of the present article is interested in the case of non-trivial fibration with maximal irregularity, i.e. with \(q=b+g-1\). He generalizes a method of Xiao Gang to construct prototypes of fibred surfaces with maximal irregularity without being birational to a product. This enables him, in the case \(g=3\), to determine the degenerate fibres and invariants of these surfaces. He also proves structure results on the moduli space for fibred surfaces with fibre genus \(g=2\) and \(g=3\).