Times: 2026 Mar 12 from 10:55AM to 11:25AM (Central Time (US & Canada))
Abstract:
Works of Donaldson and Gompf show that a closed, oriented 4-manifold admits a symplectic structure if and only if it admits the structure of a Lefschetz pencil. However, the question of how many Lefschetz pencils (or fibrations) a given symplectic 4-manifold admits remains open. Works of Park–Yun and Baykur construct 4-manifolds admitting arbitrarily large (but finite) numbers of Lefschetz pencils or fibrations of the same genus. In this talk, we will construct infinitely many inequivalent Lefschetz pencils of the same genus on ruled surfaces of negative Euler characteristic. In fact, our construction gives the first example of infinitely many inequivalent but diffeomorphic Lefschetz pencils and fibrations of the same genus. This is joint work with Carlos A. Serván.