Irrational pencils and Betti numbers (Q6173845)

The paper is about irrational pencils with isolated critical points on compact aspherical comlex manifolds. Let \(X\) be a (connected) compact complex manifold of complex dimension \(n\geq 2\) and let \(S\) be a closed Riemann surface of positive genus. An irrational pencil is a surjective map \(f:X\rightarrow S\) which is holomorphic with connected fibers. Let \(\Omega\) be the kernel of the corresponding induced homomorphism \(f_*: \pi_1(X)\rightarrow \pi_1(S)\). Let \(\hat{X}\rightarrow X\) be the covering space such that \(\pi_1(\hat{X})\cong \Omega\). The authors mainly prove that the homology group of \(\hat{X}\) with rational coefficients is infinite dimensional. They also prove that whenever the set of critical points is non-empty and \(X\) is aspherical, the homology group of \(\Omega\) with rational coefficients is infinite dimensional. They determine that as a group \(\Omega\) can not be of a specific type. Moreover, they construct new examples of smooth projective varieties whose fundamental group has a non-finitely generated homology.