Surface bundles over surfaces with arbitrarily many fiberings (Q888891)

The author gives a first example of a 4-manifold \(E\) that can be written as a surface bundle over a surface with base and fiber both closed surfaces of negative Euler characteristic in at least 3 different ways. In fact, for each \(n\geq 3\), \(g_1\geq 2\) there exists a 4-manifold \(E\) and integers \(g_2,\ldots,g_n\) (which can be chosen so that \(g_1,\ldots,g_n\) are pairwise distinct), and maps \(p_i: E\to \Sigma_{g_i}\) realizing \(E\) as a surface bundle over a surface in at least \(n\) ways, distinct up to \(\pi_1\)-fiberwise diffeomorphism. If \(g_i\neq g_j\), also the fibers of \(p_i\) and \(p_j\) have distinct genera; consequently \(p_i\) and \(p_j\) are inequivalent up to fiberwise diffeomorphism. The construction can be done such that at least one of the monodromy representations \(\rho_i:\pi_1\Sigma_{g_i}\to \text{Mod}_{h_i}\) has image contained in the Torelli group \(\mathcal{I}_{h_i}\leq\text{Mod}_{h_i}\). This contrasts a recent theorem of the same author [\textit{N. Salter}, Algebr. Geom. Topol. 15, No. 6, 3613--3652 (2015; Zbl 1334.57029)] that if the monodromy is contained in the Johnson kernel \(\mathcal{K}_{h_i}\leq \mathcal{I}_{h_i}\) then a surface bundle \(\pi: E\to B\) over a surface admits two distinct such structures only if \(E\) is diffeomorphic to \(B\times B'\), the product of the base spaces. Furthermore, the author shows that there is a sequence of surface bundles over surfaces \(E_n\) with Euler characteristic \(\chi(E_n)=24n-8\) such that \(E_n\) admits \(2^n\) fiberings as surface bundles over a surface, distinct up to \(\pi_1\)-fiberwise diffeomorphism. Generalizing a theorem of \textit{F. E. A. Johnson} [Arch. Math. 73, No. 2, 81--89 (1999; Zbl 1003.20036)], the author also proves that a 4-manifold \(E\) with \(\chi(E)=4d\) can admit at most \(F(d)=\sigma_0(d)(d+1)^{2d+6}\) distinct such fiberings, where \(\sigma_0(d)\) denotes the number of divisors of \(d\).