On degenerations of fiber spaces of curves of genus \(\geqq 2\) (Q1383623)

This announcement is concerned with the study of degenerations of fibered surfaces via degenerations of the base curve and the fibers. The authors consider a surface of general type \(X\) admitting a fibration \(X\to S\) with base genus \(\geq 2\) and show that for a weakly projective degeneration of such a surface, which satisfies a certain condition on monodromy, the components of the singular fiber are one from three possibilities, namely they may be rational surfaces, ruled surfaces or surfaces fibered over a curve obtained from the degeneration of the base curve \(S\).