Title: Near symplectic forms and singular Lefschetz fibrations
Time: Saturday, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Abstract: It is known that smooth oriented closed 4-manifolds have near symplectic forms, i.e. closed 2-forms which vanish precisely on circles. These were constructed by Dave Gay and myself. Now Auroux, Donaldson, and Katzarkov have shown that near symplectic forms are supported by singular Lefschetz pencils. I will discuss these works and attempts to construct singular Lefschetz fibrations (e.g. on 4-manifolds without 3- and 4-handles).