Monodromy groups of irregular elliptic surfaces

Abstract

Monodromy groups, i.e. the groups of isometries of the intersection lattice L_X:=H_2/torsion generated by the monodromy action of all deformation families of a given surface, have been computed in math.AG/0006231 for any minimal elliptic surface with p_g>q=0. New and refined methods are now employed to address the cases of minimal elliptic surfaces with p_g+1>q>0. To this end we find explicit families such that any isometry is in the group generated by their monodromies or does not respect the invariance of the canonical class or the spinor norm. The monodromy action is moreover shown to act by the full symplectic group on the first homology modulo torsion.