Signatures of foliated surface bundles and the symplectomorphism groups of surfaces

Abstract

For any closed oriented surface F of genus at least three, we prove the existence of foliated F-bundles over surfaces such that the signatures of the total spaces are non-zero. We can arrange that the total holonomy of the horizontal foliations preserve a prescribed symplectic form on the fiber. We relate the cohomology class represented by the transverse symplectic form to a crossed homomorphism from the symplectomophism group of the fiber to its first real cohomology. This crossed homomorphism extends the flux homomorphism defined on the identity component of the symplectomorphism group.