Monodromy Invariants – From Symplectic to Smooth Manifolds

Recently, together with Auroux and Donaldson, we have introduced some new invariants of four-dimensional symplectic manifolds. Building on the Moishezon–Teicher braid factorization techniques, we show how to compute fundamental groups of compliments to a ramification curve of generic projection. We also show that these fundamental groups are only homology invariants and outline the computations in some examples.Demonstrating the ubiquity of algebra, we go further and, using Braid factorization, we compute invariants of a derived category of representations of the quiver associated with the Fukaya–Seidel category of the vanishing cycles of a Lefschetz pencil and a structure of a symplectic four-dimensional manifold. This idea is suggested by the homological mirror symmetry conjecture of Kontsevich. We do not use it in our computations, although everything is explicit. We outline a procedure for finding homeomorphic, nonsymplectomorphic, four-dimensional symplectic manifolds with the same Saiberg–Witten invariants. This procedure defines invariants in the smooth category as well.