#### DOCUMENTA MATHEMATICA, Vol. 3 (1998), 321-342

Mina Teicher

Chern Classes of Fibered Products of Surfaces

In this paper we introduce a formula to compute Chern classes of fibered products of algebraic surfaces. For $f: X\to \CPt$ a generic projection of an algebraic surface, we define $X_k$ for $k\le n$ $(n=\deg f)$ to be the closure of $k$ products of $X$ over $f$ minus the big diagonal. For $k=n$ (or $n-1)$, $X_k$ is called the full Galois cover of $f$ w.r.t. full symmetric group. We give a formula for $c_1^2$ and $c_2$ of $X_k.$ For $k=n$ the formulas were already known. We apply the formula in two examples where we manage to obtain a surface with a high slope of $c_1^2/c_2.$ We pose conjectures concerning the spin structure of fibered products of Veronese surfaces and their fundamental groups.

Keywords and Phrases: Surfaces, Chern classes, Galois covers, fibered product, generic projection, algebraic surface.

1991 Mathematics Subject Classification: 20F36, 14J10

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