The focus-focus fibration [04IM]
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The focus-focus fibration
In dimension 2 it is much easier to produce symplectic semi-stable compactifications. Now we will show how Example 3.16 gives rise to a symplectic semi-stable compactification diffeomorphic to a K3 surface. This will require a local model of Lagrangian fibration with a semi-stable singular fibre, such as the one in the following:
Example 3.20.
Let and let be the restriction to of the standard symplectic form on . One can easily check that the following map is a Lagrangian fibration:
| (13) |
The only singular fibre is , which has the topology of a fibre. It follows that this fibration is conjugate to the topological fibration in Example 2.6.
Lagrangian fibrations with semi-stable singular fibres, e.g., conjugate to the fibration in Example 2.6, are called focus-focus fibrations. They have been studied extensively in Hamiltonian Mechanics [4], [34] –where they got their name– and more recently in symplectic topology [24], [33] and Mirror Symmetry [14].
Let be the multi-valued function . Denote by the unit open disk and let . Let be a focus-focus fibration. It has been shown [33] that there are coordinates on , with values in , a smooth function such that and a choice of generators of with respect to which the periods and of can be written as
Clearly is multi-valued and blows up as . The lattice
has monodromy given by as in (6). We now describe the affine structure induced on . Consider the two open subsets
On we chose the branch of with values in and we denote it by . On we chose the branch with values in which we denote by . Clearly on we have . A computation shows that the maps given by
with , are a choice of affine coordinates associated to and .
It is easy to check that the map (or ) extends continuously to . Call the extended map. On a sufficiently small neighborhood of , the map is a homeomorphism of onto . The reader may verify that is a node with respect to the affine structure given by . In other words, the map restricted to is an affine isomorphism between and the affine manifold whose affine structure is the restriction of the one in Example 3.7. The affine structure with singularities on induced by a focus-focus fibration is therefore simple. In particular, the affine structure induced by Example 3.20 is simple.
Remark 3.21.
Germs of focus-focus fibrations –with respect to symplectic conjugation– are classified by formal power series in two variables with vanishing constant term [33]. Such series correspond to the Taylor coefficients of functions as above evaluated at . This means that there is an infinite number of different germs of focus-focus fibrations, all inducing simple affine manifolds with singularities, i.e. inducing the same singular affine structure on the base. In §4 we will see that a similar phenomenon happens in higher dimensions.