arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Ivan Smith.
We prove that, for any n, there are simply-connected four-manifolds which admit n-tuples of symplectic forms whose first Chern classes have pairwise different divisibilities in integral cohomology. It follows that the moduli space of symplectic forms modulo diffeomorphisms on such a manifold has at least n connected components.
Symplectic four-manifolds give rise to Lefschetz fibrations, which are determined by monodromy representations of free groups in mapping class groups. We study the topology of Lefschetz fibrations by analysing the action of the monodromy on the universal cover of a smooth fibre. We give new and simple proofs that Lefschetz fibrations arising from pencils (i.e. with exceptional sections) never split as non-trivial fibre sums, and that no simple closed curve can be invariant to isotopy under the monodromy representation.
Integral symplectic 4-manifolds may be described in terms of Lefschetz fibrations. In this note we give a formula for the signature of any Lefschetz fibration in terms of the second cohomology of the moduli space of stable curves. As a consequence we see that the sphere in moduli space defined by any (not necessarily holomorphic) Lefschetz fibration has positive "symplectic volume"; it evaluates positively with the Kahler class. Some other applications of the signature formula and some more general results for genus two fibrations are discussed.