arXiv subjects

R. Inanc Baykur

Publications and source records attributed to R. Inanc Baykur.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Simplified broken Lefschetz fibrations and trisections of 4-manifolds

Shapes of four dimensional spaces can be studied effectively via maps to standard surfaces. We explain, and illustrate by quintessential examples, how to simplify such generic maps on 4-manifolds topologically, in order to derive simple decompositions into much better understood manifold pieces. Our methods not only allow us to produce various interesting families of examples, but also to establish a correspondence between simplified broken Lefschetz fibrations and simplified trisections of closed, oriented 4-manifolds.

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arXiv2017

Simplifying indefinite fibrations on 4-manifolds

We present explicit algorithms for simplifying the topology of indefinite fibrations on 4-manifolds, which include broken Lefschetz fibrations and indefinite Morse 2-functions. The algorithms consist of sequences of moves, which modify indefinite fibrations in smooth 1-parameter families. In particular, given an arbitrary broken Lefschetz fibration, we show how to turn it to one with directed and embedded round (indefinite fold) image, and to one with all the fibers and the round locus connected. We also show how to realize any given null-homologous 1-dimensional submanifold with prescribed local models for its components as the round locus of such a broken Lefschetz fibration. These algorithms allow us to give purely topological and constructive proofs of the existence of simplified broken Lefschetz fibrations and Morse 2-functions on general 4-manifolds, and a theorem of Auroux-Donaldson-Katzarkov on the existence of broken Lefschetz pencils with directed embedded round image on near-symplectic 4-manifolds. We moreover establish a correspondence between broken Lefschetz fibrations and Gay-Kirby trisections of 4-manifolds, and show the existence of simplified trisections on all 4-manifolds. Building on this correspondence, we provide several new constructions of trisections, including infinite families of genus-3 trisections with homotopy inequivalent total spaces, and exotic same genera trisections of 4-manifolds in the homeomorphism classes of complex rational surfaces.

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arXiv2016

Fillings of genus-1 open books and 4-braids

We show that there are contact 3-manifolds of support genus one which admit infinitely many Stein fillings, but do not admit arbitrarily large ones. These Stein fillings arise from genus-1 allowable Lefschetz fibrations with distinct homology groups, all filling a fixed minimal genus open book supporting the boundary contact 3-manifold. In contrast, we observe that there are only finitely many possibilities for the homology groups of Stein fillings of a given contact 3-manifold with support genus zero. We also show that there are 4-strand braids which admit infinitely many distinct Hurwitz classes of quasipositive factorizations, yielding in particular an infinite family of knotted complex analytic annuli in the 4-ball bounding the same transverse link up to transverse isotopy. These realize the smallest possible examples in terms of the number of boundary components a genus-1 mapping class and the number of strands a braid can have with infinitely many positive/quasipositive factorizations.

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arXiv2015

Small symplectic Calabi-Yau surfaces and exotic 4-manifolds via genus-3 pencils

We explicitly produce symplectic genus-3 Lefschetz pencils (with base points), whose total spaces are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to rational surfaces CP^2 # p (-CP^2) for p= 7, 8, 9. We then give a new construction of an infinite family of symplectic Calabi-Yau surfaces with first Betti number b_1=2,3, along with a surface with b_1=4 homeomorphic to the 4-torus. These are presented as the total spaces of symplectic genus-3 Lefschetz pencils we construct via new positive factorizations in the mapping class group of a genus-3 surface. Our techniques in addition allow us to answer in the negative a question of Korkmaz regarding the upper bound on b_1 of a genus-g fibration.

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arXiv2015

Inequivalent Lefschetz fibrations and surgery equivalence of symplectic 4-manifolds

We prove that any symplectic 4-manifold which is not a rational or ruled surface, after sufficiently many blow-ups, admits an arbitrary number of nonisomorphic Lefschetz fibrations of the same genus which cannot be obtained from one another via Luttinger surgeries. This generalizes results of Park and Yun who constructed pairs of nonisomorphic Lefschetz fibrations on knot surgered elliptic surfaces. In turn, we prove that there are monodromy factorizations of Lefschetz pencils which have the same characteristic numbers but cannot be obtained from each other via partial conjugations by Dehn twists, answering a problem posed by Auorux.

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arXiv2015

Small Lefschetz fibrations and exotic 4-manifolds

We explicitly construct genus-2 Lefschetz fibrations whose total spaces are minimal symplectic 4-manifolds homeomorphic to complex rational surfaces CP^2 # p (-CP^2) for p=7, 8, 9, and to 3 CP^2 #q (-CP^2) for q =12,...,19. Complementarily, we prove that there are no minimal genus-2 Lefschetz fibrations whose total spaces are homeomorphic to any other simply-connected 4-manifold with b^+ at most 3, with one possible exception when b^+=3. Meanwhile, we produce positive Dehn twist factorizations for several new genus-2 Lefschetz fibrations with small number of critical points, including the smallest possible example, which follow from a reverse engineering procedure we introduce for this setting. We also derive exotic minimal symplectic 4-manifolds in the homeomorphism classes of CP^2 # 4 (-CP^2) and 3 CP^2 # 6 (-CP^2) from small Lefschetz fibrations over surfaces of higher genera.

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arXiv2015

Minimality and fiber sum decompositions of Lefschetz fibrations

We give a short proof of a conjecture of Stipsicz on the minimality of fiber sums of Lefschetz fibrations, which was proved earlier by Usher. We then construct the first examples of genus g > 1 Lefschetz fibrations on minimal symplectic 4-manifolds which, up to diffeomorphisms of the summands, admit unique decompositions as fiber sums.

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arXiv2015

Positive factorizations of mapping classes

In this article, we study the maximal length of positive Dehn twist factorizations of surface mapping classes. In connection to fundamental questions regarding the uniform topology of symplectic 4-manifolds and Stein fillings of contact 3-manifolds coming from the topology of supporting Lefschetz pencils and open books, we completely determine which boundary multitwists admit arbitrarily long positive Dehn twist factorizations along nonseparating curves, and which mapping class groups contain elements admitting such factorizations. Moreover, for every pair of positive integers g,n, we tell whether or not there exist genus-g Lefschetz pencils with n base points, and if there are, what the maximal Euler characteristic is whenever it is bounded above. We observe that only symplectic 4-manifolds of general type can attain arbitrarily large topology regardless of the genus and the number of base points of Lefschetz pencils on them.

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arXiv2015

Hurwitz equivalence for Lefschetz fibrations and their multisections

In this article, we characterize isomorphism classes of Lefschetz fibrations with multisections via their monodromy factorizations. We prove that two Lefschetz fibrations with multisections are isomorphic if and only if their monodromy factorizations in the relevant mapping class groups are related to each other by a finite collection of modifications, which extend the well-known Hurwitz equivalence. This in particular characterizes isomorphism classes of Lefschetz pencils. We then show that, from simple relations in the mapping class groups, one can derive new (and old) examples of Lefschetz fibrations which cannot be written as fiber sums of blown-up pencils.

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arXiv2015

Knotted surfaces in 4-manifolds and stabilizations

In this paper, we study stable equivalence of exotically knotted surfaces in 4-manifolds, surfaces that are topologically isotopic but not smoothly isotopic. We prove that any pair of embedded surfaces in the same homology class become smoothly isotopic after stabilizing them by handle additions in the ambient 4-manifold, which can moreover assumed to be attached in a standard way (locally and unknottedly) in many favorable situations. In particular, any exotically knotted pair of surfaces with cyclic fundamental group complements become smoothly isotopic after a same number of standard stabilizations - analogous to C.T.C. Wall's celebrated result on the stable equivalence of simply-connected 4-manifolds. We moreover show that all constructions of exotic knottings of surfaces we are aware of, which display a good variety of techniques and ideas, produce surfaces that become smoothly isotopic after a single stabilization.

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arXiv2015

Multisections of Lefschetz fibrations and topology of symplectic 4-manifolds

We initiate a study of positive multisections of Lefschetz fibrations via positive factorizations in framed mapping class groups of surfaces. Using our methods, one can effectively capture various interesting symplectic surfaces in symplectic 4-manifolds as multisections, such as Seiberg-Witten basic classes and exceptional classes, or branched loci of compact Stein surfaces as branched coverings of the 4-ball. Various problems regarding the topology of symplectic 4-manifolds, such as the smooth classification of symplectic Calabi-Yau 4-manifolds, can be translated to combinatorial problems in this manner. After producing special monodromy factorizations of Lefschetz pencils on symplectic Calabi-Yau K3 and Enriques surfaces, and introducing monodromy substitutions tailored for generating multisections, we obtain several novel applications, allowing us to construct: new counter-examples to Stipsicz's conjecture on fiber sum indecomposable Lefschetz fibrations, non-isomorphic Lefschetz pencils of the same genera on the same new symplectic 4-manifolds, the very first examples of exotic Lefschetz pencils, and new exotic embeddings of surfaces.

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arXiv2014

Broken Lefschetz fibrations and mapping class groups

The purpose of this note is to explain a combinatorial description of closed smooth oriented 4-manifolds in terms of positive Dehn twist factorizations of surface mapping classes, and further explore these connections. This is obtained via monodromy representations of simplified broken Lefschetz fibrations on 4-manifolds, for which we provide an extension of Hurwitz moves that allows us to uniquely determine the isomorphism class of a broken Lefschetz fibration. We furthermore discuss broken Lefschetz fibrations whose monodromies are contained in special subgroups of the mapping class group; namely, the hyperelliptic mapping class group and in the Torelli group, respectively, and present various results on them which extend or contrast with those known to hold for honest Lefschetz fibrations. Lastly, we show that there are 4-manifolds admitting infinitely many pairwise nonisomorphic relatively minimal broken Lefschetz fibrations with isotopic regular fibers.

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arXiv2014

Virtually symplectic fibered 4-manifolds

We mostly determine which closed smooth oriented 4-manifolds fibering over lower dimensional manifolds are virtually symplectic, i.e. finitely covered by symplectic 4-manifolds.

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arXiv2013

Flat bundles and commutator lengths

The purpose of this article is two-fold: We first give a more elementary proof of a recent theorem of Korkmaz, Monden, and the author, which states that the commutator length of the n-th power of a Dehn twist along a boundary parallel curve on a surface with boundary S of genus g at least two is the floor of (|n|+3)/2 in the mapping class group of S. The alternative proof we provide goes through push maps and Morita's use of Milnor-Wood inequalities, in particular it does not appeal to gauge theory. In turn, we produce infinite families of pairwise non-homotopic 4-manifolds admitting genus g surface bundles over genus h surfaces with distinguished sections which are flat but admit no flat connections for which the sections are flat, for every fixed pairs of integers g and h at least two. The latter result generalizes a theorem of Bestvina, Church, and Souto, and allows us to obtain a simple proof of Morita's non-lifting theorem (for an infinite family of non-conjugate subgroups) in the case of marked surfaces.

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arXiv2012

Topological complexity of symplectic 4-manifolds and Stein fillings

We prove that there exists no a priori bound on the Euler characteristic of a closed symplectic 4-manifold coming solely from the genus of a compatible Lefschetz pencil on it, nor is there a similar bound for Stein fillings of a contact 3-manifold coming from the genus of a compatible open book --- except possibly for a few low genera cases. To obtain our results, we produce the first examples of factorizations of a boundary parallel Dehn twist as arbitrarily long products of positive Dehn twists along non-separating curves on a fixed surface with boundary. This solves an open problem posed by Auroux, Smith and Wajnryb, and a more general variant of it raised by Korkmaz, Ozbagci and Stipsicz, independently.

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arXiv2012

Lefschetz fibrations and Torelli groups

For each g > 2 and h > 1, we explicitly construct (1) fiber sum indecomposable relatively minimal genus g Lefschetz fibrations over genus h surfaces whose monodromies lie in the Torelli group, (2) fiber sum indecomposable genus g surface bundles over genus h surfaces whose monodromies are in the Torelli group (provided g > 3), and (3) infinitely many genus g Lefschetz fibrations over genus h surfaces that are not fiber sums of holomorphic ones.

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arXiv2012

Virtual Betti numbers and the symplectic Kodaira dimension of fibered 4-manifolds

We prove that if a closed oriented 4-manifold X fibers over a 2- or 3-dimensional manifold, in most cases all of its virtual Betti numbers are infinite. In turn, we show that a closed oriented 4-manifold X which is not a tower of torus bundles and fibering over a 2- or 3-dimensional manifold does not admit a torsion symplectic canonical class, nor is of Kodaira dimension zero.

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arXiv2012

Indecomposable surface bundles over surfaces

For each pair of integers g at least 2 and h at least 1, we explicitly construct infinitely many fiber sum and section sum indecomposable genus g surface bundles over genus h surfaces whose total spaces are pairwise homotopy inequivalent.

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