Universal Lefschetz fibrations over bounded surfaces

Abstract

In analogy with the vector bundle theory we define universal and strongly universal Lefschetz fibrations over bounded surfaces. After giving a characterization of these fibrations we construct very special strongly universal Lefschetz fibrations when the fiber is the torus or an orientable surface with connected boundary and the base surface is the disk. As a by-product we also get some immersion results for $4$–dimensional $2$–handlebodies.