Lefschetz fibrations, open books, and symplectic fillings of contact 3-manifolds (Q6064567)

Summary: Ever since Donaldson showed that every closed symplectic 4-manifold admits a Lefschetz pencil and Giroux proved that every closed contact 3-manifold admits an adapted open book decomposition, Lefschetz fibrations and open books have been used fruitfully to obtain significant results about the topology of symplectic 4-manifolds and contact 3-manifolds. In this expository article, we present the highlights of our contribution to the subject at hand based on joint work with several coauthors during the past twenty years. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1519.00033].