Finite Quotients of Surface Braid Groups and Double Kodaira Fibrations
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Finite quotients of surface braid groups and double Kodaira fibrations Francesco Polizzi and Pietro Sabatino To Professor Ciro Ciliberto on the occasion of his 70th birthday Abstract Let Σ1 be a closed Riemann surface of genus 1. We give an account of some results obtained in the recent papers [CaPol19, Pol20, PolSab21] and concerning what we call here pure braid quotients, namely non-abelian finite groups appearing as quotients of the pure braid group on two strands P2 ¹Σ1º. We also explain how these groups can be used in order to provide new constructions of double Kodaira fibrations. 0 Introduction A Kodaira fibration is a smooth, connected holomorphic fibration 51 : ( −! 퐵1, where ( is a compact complex surface and 퐵1 is a compact complex curve, which is not isotrivial (this means that not all its fibres are biholomorphic to each others). The genus 11 := 6¹퐵1º is called the base genus of the fibration, whereas the genus 6 := 6¹퐹º, where 퐹 is any fibre, is called the fibre genus. If a surface ( is the total space of a Kodaira fibration, we will call it a Kodaira fibred surface. For every Kodaira fibration we have 11 ≥ 2 and 6 ≥ 3, see [Kas68, Theorem 1.1]. Since the fibration is smooth, the condition on the base genus implies that ( contains no rational or elliptic curves; hence it is minimal and, by the sub-additivity of the Kodaira dimension, it is of general type, hence algebraic. arXiv:2106.01743v1 [math.GT] 3 Jun 2021 Francesco Polizzi Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università della Calabria, Ponte Bucci Cubo 30B, 87036 Arcavacata di Rende (Cosenza), Italy, e-mail: [email protected] Pietro Sabatino Via Val Sillaro 5, 00141 Roma e-mail: [email protected] 1 2 Francesco Polizzi and Pietro Sabatino Examples of Kodaira fibrations were originally constructed in [Kod67, At69] in order to show that, unlike the topological Euler characteristic, the signature f of a real manifold is not multiplicative for fibre bundles. In fact, every Kodaira fibred surface ( satisfies f¹(º ¡ 0, see for example the introduction of [LLR20], whereas f¹퐵1º = f¹퐹º = 0, and so f¹(º < f¹퐵1ºf¹퐹º. A double Kodaira surface is a compact complex surface (, endowed with a double Kodaira fibration, namely a surjective, holomorphic map 5 : ( −! 퐵1 ×퐵2 yielding, by composition with the natural projections, two Kodaira fibrations 58 : ( −! 퐵8, 8 = 1, 2. The purpose of this article is to give an account of recent results, obtained in the series of papers [CaPol19, Pol20, PolSab21], concerning the construction of some double Kodaira fibrations (that we call diagonal) by means of group-theoretical methods. Let us start by introducing the needed terminology. Let 1 ≥ 2 and = ≥ 2 be two positive integers, and let P2 ¹Σ1º be the pure braid group on two strands on a closed Riemann surface of genus 1. We say that a finite group 퐺 is a pure braid quotient of type ¹1, =º if there exists a group epimorphism i : P2 ¹Σ1º −! 퐺 (1) such that i¹퐴12º has order =, where 퐴12 is the braid corresponding, via the isomor- phism P2 ¹Σ1º ' c1 ¹Σ1 × Σ1 − Δº, to the homotopy class in Σ1 × Σ1 − Δ of a loop in Σ1 × Σ1 “winding once" around the diagonal Δ. Since 퐴12 is a commutator in P2 ¹Σ1º and = ≥ 2, it follows that every pure braid quotient is a non-abelian group, see Remark2. By Grauert-Remmert’s extension theorem together with Serre’s GAGA, the exis- tence of a pure braid quotient as in (1) is equivalent to the existence of a Galois cover f : ( −! Σ1 ×Σ1, branched over Δ with branching order =. After Stein factorization, this yields in turn a diagonal double Kodaira fibration 5 : ( −! Σ11 × Σ12 . We have f = 5 , i.e. no Stein factorization is needed, if and only if 퐺 is a strong pure braid quotient, an additional condition explained in Definition3. We are now in a position to state our first results, see Theorems1,2,3: • If 1 ≥ 2 is an integer and ? ≥ 5 is a prime number, then both extra-special ?-groups of order ?41¸1 are non-strong pure braid quotients of type ¹1, ?º. • If 1 ≥ 2 is an integer and ? is a prime number dividing 1 ¸ 1, then both extra- special ?-groups of order ?21¸1 are pure braid quotients of type ¹1, ?º. • If a finite group 퐺 is a pure braid quotient, then j퐺j ≥ 32, with equality holding if and only if 퐺 is extra-special. Moreover, in the last case, we can explicitly compute the number of distinct quotients maps of type (1), up to the natural action of Aut¹퐺º. We believe that such results are significant because, although we know that P2 ¹Σ1º is residually ?-finite for all ? ≥ 2 (see [BarBel09, pp. 1481-1490]), it is usually tricky to explicitly describe its non-abelian finite quotients. The geometrical counterparts of the above group-theoretical statements allow us to construct infinite families of double Kodaira fibrations with interesting numerical Finite quotients of surface braid groups and double Kodaira fibrations 3 properties, for instance having slope greater than 2 ¸ 1/3 or signature equal to 16, see Theorems4,5,6: • Let 5 : ( ? −! Σ10 ×Σ10 be the diagonal double Kodaira fibration associated with a non-strong pure braid quotient i : P2 ¹Σ2º −! 퐺 of type ¹2,?º, where 퐺 is an extra-special ?-group 퐺 of order ?9 and 10 = ?4 ¸ 1. Then the maximum slope a¹( ?º is attained for precisely two values of ?, namely 12 a¹( º = a¹( º = 2 ¸ . 5 7 35 Furthermore, a¹( ?º ¡ 2 ¸ 1/3 for all ? ≥ 5. More precisely, if ? ≥ 7 the function a¹( ?º is strictly decreasing and 1 lim a¹( ?º = 2 ¸ . ?!¸1 3 • Let Σ1 be any closed Riemann surface of genus 1. Then there exists a double Kodaira fibration 5 : ( −! Σ1 × Σ1. Moreover, denoting by ^¹1º the number of such fibrations, we have ^¹1º ≥ !¹1 ¸ 1º, where !: N −! N stands for the arithmetic function counting the number of distinct prime factors of a positive integer. In particular, lim sup ^¹1º = ¸1. 1!¸1 • Let 퐺 be a finite group and f : ( −! Σ1 ×Σ1 be a Galois cover, with Galois group 퐺, branched over the diagonal Δ with branching order =. Then j퐺j ≥ 32, and equality holds if and only if 퐺 is extra-special. If 퐺 is extra-special of order 32 and ¹1, =º = ¹2, 2º, then f : ( −! Σ2 × Σ2 is a diagonal double Kodaira fibration such that 11 = 12 = 2, 61 = 62 = 41, f¹(º = 16. As a consequence of the last result, we obtain a sharp lower bound for the signature of a diagonal double Kodaira fibration, see Theorem7: • Let 5 : ( −! Σ11 × Σ12 be a diagonal double Kodaira fibration, associated with a pure braid quotient i : P2 ¹Σ1º −! 퐺 of type ¹1, =º. Then f¹(º ≥ 16, and equality holds precisely when ¹1, =º = ¹2, 2º and 퐺 is an extra-special group of order 32. Note that our methods show that every curve of genus 1 (and not only some special curve with extra automorphisms) is the basis of a (double) Kodaira fibration and that, in addition, the number of distinct Kodaira fibrations over a fixed base can be arbitrarily large. Furthermore, every curve of genus 2 is the base of a (double) Kodaira fibration with signature 16 and this provides, to our knowledge, the first example of positive-dimensional family of (double) Kodaira fibrations with small signature. 4 Francesco Polizzi and Pietro Sabatino The aforementioned examples with signature 16 also provide new “double so- lutions” to a problem, posed by G. Mess and included in Kirby’s problem list in low-dimensional topology, see [Kir97, Problem 2.18 A], asking what is the smallest number 1 for which there exists a real surface bundle over a real surface with base genus 1 and non-zero signature. We actually have 1 = 2, also for double Kodaira fibrations, see Theorem8: • Let ( be double Kodaira surface, associated with a pure braid quotient i : P2 ¹Σ1º −! 퐺 of type ¹2, 2º, where 퐺 is an extra-special group of order 32. Then the real manifold - underlying ( is a closed, orientable 4-manifold of signature 16 that can be realized as a real surface bundle over a real surface of genus 2, with fibre genus 41, in two different ways. In fact, it is an interesting question whether 16 and 41 are the minimum possible values for the signature and the fibre genus of a (not necessarily diagonal) double Kodaira surface 5 : ( −! Σ2 × Σ2, but we will not develop this point here. The above results paint a rather clear picture regarding pure braid quotients and the relative diagonal double Kodaira fibrations when j퐺j ≤ 32. It is natural then to investigate further this topic for j퐺j ¡ 32, and indeed this paper also contains the following new result, see Theorem9: • If 퐺 is a finite group with 32 < j퐺j < 64, then 퐺 is not a pure braid quotient. We provide only a sketch of the proof, which is based on calculations performed by means of the computer algebra system GAP4, see [GAP4]; the details will appear in a forthcoming paper. Acknowledgments. F. Polizzi was partially supported by GNSAGA-INdAM. Both authors thank A. Causin for drawing the figures. Notation and conventions. The order of a finite group 퐺 is denoted by j퐺j. If G 2 퐺, the order of G is denoted by >¹Gº. The subgroup generated by G1,...,G= 2 퐺 is denoted by hG1,...,G=i. The center of 퐺 is denoted by / ¹퐺º and the centralizer of an element G 2 퐺 by 퐶퐺 ¹Gº.