Clustering of critical points in Lefschetz fibrations and the symplectic Szpiro inequality (Q4806480)

This paper proves a Szpiro type inequality for semistable symplectic Lefschetz fibrations of arbitrary base and fiber genus (a Lefschetz fibration is semistable if every fiber is a semistable complex curve). In the case of pencils (when the base curve has genus \(0\)), the result is that the number of critical points is bounded above by \(6h(D-1)\), where \(h\) is the genus of a smooth fiber and \(D\) is the number of singular fibers. This result means that there are global obstructions to the clustering of critical points in a fiber. These obstructions give lower bounds for the commutator lengths of Dehn twists (more specifically, let \(t\) be a Dehn twist in a surface of genus \(h\) and write \(t^{k}\) as a product of \(g\) commutators in the mapping class group, then one has a lower bound for such \(g\)). The result generalizes [\textit{H. Endo} and \textit{D. Kotschick}, Invent. Math. 144, 169--175 (2001; Zbl 0987.57004)]. The authors also prove that the number of non-separating vanishing cycles in a Lefschetz pencil of genus \(h\) is not less than \((8h-3)/5\), generalising results of [\textit{T.-J. Li}, Int. Math. Res. Notices 2000, 941--954 (2000; Zbl 0961.57022)] and [\textit{A. Stipsicz}, Topology Appl. 117, 9--21 (2002; Zbl 1007.53059)].