Dihedral monodromy and Xiao fibrations (Q740044)

Let \(S\) be a smooth projective surface over \(\mathbb C\) of irregularity \(q\) equipped with a fibration \(f:S\to B\) over a curve \(B\) of genus \(b\) with connected fibres. Let \(g\) be the genus of a general fibre \(F\) of \(f\). \textit{G. Xiao} conjectured that when \(f\) is not isotrivial (i.e., when the smooth fibres of \(f\) are not all isomorphic) then \(2(q-b)\leq g+1\) and proved it for the case \(b=0\) [Duke Math. J. 55, 597--602 (1987; Zbl 0651.14021)]. The conjecture was shown to be false for \(b>0\) by the second author in a very interesting paper [J. Reine Angew. Math. 431, 75--89 (1992; Zbl 0753.14040)]. The counter example produced is a fibration with \(g=4\) and \(q-b=3\). Up to the present paper this was the only known example where Xiao's conjecture failed. In the present paper three new families of fibrations violating Xiao's conjecture are constructed by a very ingenious procedure using certain étale cyclic covers of hyperelliptic curves, giving covers of \(\mathbb P^1\) with dihedral monodromy. Two of these new families of surfaces also provide examples of surfaces of general type with irregularity \(q\) of maximal Albanese dimension containing nef and effective divisors \(C\) with \(C^2>0\) and arithmetic genus \(c\) satisfying \(q<c<2q-1\), answering thus a question posed in [J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 16, No. 10, 2033--2057 (2014; Zbl 1317.14019)].