Characteristic classes of foliated surface bundles with area-preserving holonomy (Q877555)

Let \(\Sigma _g\) denote a closed oriented surface of genus \(g\geq 2\). The authors introduce new characteristic classes of foliated surface bundles with area preserving holonomy. These characteristic classes are stable with respect to \(g\) and they are highly nontrivial. The authors also prove that the second homology of the group \(\operatorname {Ham}\Sigma _g\) of Hamiltonian symplectomorphisms of \(\Sigma _g\), equipped with the discrete topology, is very large for all \(g\geq 2\).