Multisections of Lefschetz fibrations and topology of symplectic 4-manifolds (Q315275)

The authors describe a method by which the monodromy representation of a Lefschetz fibration can be lifted from the mapping class group to the framed mapping class group. The framed mapping class group is a natural extension of the mapping class group ideally suited to handle multisections, in contrast to disjoint sections. The relations thus obtained in the framed mapping class group are directly related to the existence of positive multisections of the Lefschetz fibration, see Theorem 3.6. Section 3 details this relationship and proves the key Theorem 3.6. Theoretically this builds a link between the combinatorial methods in mapping class groups and symplectic surfaces in symplectic 4-manifolds, in much the same fashion (and forming an extension of) the relationship between the mapping class group and symplectic 4-manifolds. Of particular interest are of course special surfaces such as exceptional curves, basic classes, etc. Sections 4-7 contain numerous applications of this theory. Section 4 concentrates on symplectic Kodaira dimension 0 manifolds and constructs examples homeomorphic to K3 and Enriques surfaces. It is as yet unclear if they are diffeomorphic, see Question 4.8. In Section 5 Lefschetz fibrations are constructed which are counterexamples to a conjecture of Stipsicz, see Theorem 1.3; while not the first examples they are the first systematic such constructions. Section 6 contains the construction of non-isomorphic Lefschetz fibrations of arbitrarily large fiber genus. Finally, in Section 7 further interesting examples of Lefschetz pencils having the same topology but which are non-diffeomorphic are constructed.