On bifurcation braid monodromy of elliptic fibrations

We propose to study a new kind of monodromy homomorphism for families of regular elliptic fibrations of a given differentiable fibration type to get a hold on topological properties of moduli stacks of elliptic surfaces. In specific cases, including the most significant one, when all singular fibres are nodal irreducible rational curves, we compute the corresponding monodromy group, a subgroup of the mapping class group of the fibration base punctured at the singular values of the fibration. We study a tentative algebraic characterisation and give implications for the group of diffeomorphisms compatible with the fibration. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.