Monodromy in analytic families of smooth complex surfaces yields groups of isotopy classes of orientation preserving diffeomorphisms for each family member X. For all deformation classes of minimal elliptic surfaces with p_g>q=0, we determine the monodromy group of a representative X, i.e. the group of isometries of the intersection lattice L_X:=H_2/torsion generated by the monodromy action of all families containing X. To this end we construct families such that any isometry is in the group generated by their monodromies or does not respect the invariance of the canonical class or the spinor norm.
We define a monodromy homomorphism for irreducible families of regular elliptic fibrations which takes values in the mapping class group of a punctured sphere. We compute the monodromy for elliptic fibrations only which contain no singular fibres of types other than I_1 and I*_0. There are maximal groups, which can be the monodromy groups of algebraic, resp. differentiable families of elliptic surfaces, and we give an algebraic criterion for the equality of both groups which we can check to apply in case the number of I_1 fibres is at most 6.
We study the Tannakian properties of the category of perverse sheaves on elliptic curves endowed with the convolution product. We establish that for certain sheaves with unipotent local monodromy over seven points the corresponding Tannaka group is isomorphic to $G_2$. This monodromy approach generalizes a result of Katz on the existence of $G_2$-motives in the middle cohomology of deformations of Beauville surfaces.
Monodromy groups, i.e. the groups of isometries of the intersection lattice L_X:=H_2/torsion generated by the monodromy action of all deformation families of a given surface, have been computed in math.AG/0006231 for any minimal elliptic surface with p_g>q=0. New and refined methods are now employed to address the cases of minimal elliptic surfaces with p_g+1>q>0. To this end we find explicit families such that any isometry is in the group generated by their monodromies or does not respect the invariance of the canonical class or the spinor norm. The monodromy action is moreover shown to act b…
There have been several constructions of family of varieties with exceptional monodromy group. In most cases, these constructions give Hodge structures with high weight(Hodge numbers spread out). N. Katz was the first to obtain Hodge structures with low weight(Hodge numbers equal to (2,3,2)) and geometric monodromy group G2. In this article I will give an alternative description of Katz's construction and give an extension of his result.
In this paper we investigate two stratifications of the moduli space of elliptically fibred K3 surfaces. The first comes from Shimada's classification of connected components of elliptically fibred K3 surfaces and is closely related to the root lattice of the fibration. The second is the monodromy stratification defined by Bogomolov, Petrov and Tschinkel. The main result of the paper is a classification of all positive-dimensional ambi-typical strata, that is strata which are both Shimada root strata and monodromy strata. We further discuss the connection with moduli spaces of lattice-polarise…
We show that if we are given a smooth non-isotrivial family of elliptic curves over~$\mathbb C$ with a smooth base~$B$ for which the general fiber of the mapping $J\colon B\to\mathbb A^1$ (assigning $j$-invariant of the fiber to a point) is connected, then the monodromy group of the family (acting on $H^1(\cdot,\mathbb Z)$ of the fibers) coincides with $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb Z)$; if the general fiber has $m\ge2$ connected components, then the monodromy group has index at most~$2m$ in $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb Z)$. By contrast, in \emph{any} family of hyperelliptic curves of genus $g\ge3$, the mon…
The logarithmic connections studied in the paper are direct images of regular connections on line bundles over genus-2 double covers of the elliptic curve. We give an explicit parametrization of all such connections, determine their monodromy, differential Galois group and the underlying rank-2 vector bundle. The latter is described in terms of elementary transforms. The question of its (semi)-stability is addressed.
Given a complex quasiprojective curve $B$ and a non-isotrivial family $\mathcal{E}$ of elliptic curves over $B$, the $p$-torsion $\mathcal{E}[p]$ yields a monodromy representation $ρ_\mathcal{E}[p]:π_1(B)\rightarrow \mathrm{GL}_2(\mathbb{F}_p)$. We prove that if $ρ_{\mathcal E}[p]\cong ρ_{\mathcal E'}[p]$ then $\mathcal{E}$ and $\mathcal E'$ are isogenous, provided $p$ is larger than a constant depending only on the gonality of $B$. This can be viewed as a function field analog of the Frey--Mazur conjecture, which states that an elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}$ is determined up to isogeny by i…
New monodromy relations of loop amplitudes are derived in open string theory. We particularly study N-point one-loop amplitudes described by a world-sheet cylinder (planar and non-planar) and derive a set of relations between subamplitudes of different color orderings. Various consistency checks are performed by matching alpha'-expansions of planar and non-planar amplitudes involving elliptic iterated integrals with the resulting periods giving rise to two sets of multiple elliptic zeta values. The latter refer to the two homology cycles on the once-punctured complex elliptic curve and the mon…
We prove structure theorems for the moduli stack of elliptic curves equipped with $G$-structures, where $G$ is a finite 2-generated metabelian group. In particular, we show that if $G$ has exponent $e$, then there is a subgroup $H\le GL_2(\mathbb{Z}/e)$ such that $G$-structures on elliptic curves $E$ are equivalent to "congruence structures of level $H$". Our methods are almost entirely group theoretic. Let $\widehat{M}$ denote the free profinite metabelian group of rank 2, then along the way we prove a decomposition of $Out(\widehat{M})$ as an internal semi-direct product of the subgroup of "…
The aim of this paper is to construct families of Calabi--Yau 3-folds without boundary points with maximal unipotent monodromy and to describe the variation of their Hodge structures. In particular five families are constructed. In all these cases the variation of the Hodge structures of the Calabi--Yau 3-folds is basically the variation of the Hodge structures of a family of curves. This allows us to write explicitly the Picard--Fuchs equation for the 1-dimensional families. These Calabi--Yau 3-folds are desingularizations of quotients of the product of a (fixed) elliptic curve and a K3 surfa…
Let X be a smooth variety over an algebraically closed field k of positive characteristic. We define and study a general notion of regular singularities for stratified bundles (i.e. O_X-coherent D_X-modules) on X without relying on resolution of singularities. The main result is that the category of regular singular stratified bundles with finite monodromy is equivalent to the category of continuous representations of the tame fundamental group on finite dimensional k-vector spaces. As a corollary we obtain that a stratified bundle with finite monodromy is regular singular if and only if it is…
The volume function defined by a domain in Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^n$ is the function on the space of affine hyperplanes equal to volumes cut by these hyperplanes from the domain. The study of these functions originates from the works of Archimedes and Newton and is closely related to the theory of lacunas of hyperbolic partial differential equations.The volume functions are regular at the hyperplanes of general position with respect to the boundary of the cut domain. We study their behavior at the non-regular hyperplanes, which are either tangent to the boundary of the domain at its finit…
We discuss the history of the monodromy theorem, starting from Weierstraß, and the concept of monodromy group. From this viewpoint we compare then the Weierstraß, the Legendre and other normal forms for elliptic curves, explaining their geometric meaning and distinguishing them by their stabilizer in P SL(2,Z) and their monodromy. Then we focus on the birth of the concept of the Jacobian variety, and the geometrization of the theory of Abelian functions and integrals. We end illustrating the methods of complex analysis in the simplest issue, the difference equation $f(z) = g(z+1) - g(z)$ on $\…
Let k be a field not of characteristic two and L be a set of almost all rational primes invertible in k. Suppose we have a variety X/k and strictly compatible system {M_ell -> X : ell in L} of constructible F_ell-sheaves. If the system is orthogonally or symplectically self-dual, then the geometric monodromy group of M_ell is a subgroup of a corresponding isometry group G_ell over F_ell, and we say it has big monodromy if it contains the derived subgroup DG_ell=[G_ell,G_ell]. We prove a theorem which gives sufficient conditions for M_ell to have big monodromy. We apply the theorem to explicit …
We give a systematic method to calculate some homological data from the global monodromy of a topological elliptic surface. We apply this method to the cases 1) the transcendental lattice of an extremal elliptic K3 surface, 2) the torsion part of Mordell-Weil group of a general elliptic surface, and 3) the Mordell-Weil lattice of a rational elliptic surface. We present possible list of global monodromies of rational elliptic surface and extremal elliptic $K3$ surface which reproduce to the classification obtained by Oguiso-Shioda and Shimada-Zhang respectively.
We discuss the equivalence between the categories of certain ribbon graphs and subgroups of the modular group $Γ$ and use it to construct exponentially large families of not Hurwitz equivalent simple braid monodromy factorizations of the same element. As an application, we also obtain exponentially large families of {\it topologically} distinct algebraic objects such as extremal elliptic surfaces, real trigonal curves, and real elliptic surfaces.
In this paper we deal with branched coverings over the complement to finitely many exceptional points on the Riemann sphere having the property that the local monodromy around each of the branching points is of finite order. To such a covering we assign its \textit{signature}, i.e. the set of its exceptional and branching points together with the orders of local monodromy operators around the branching points. What can be said about the monodromy group of a branched covering if its signature is known? It seems at first that the answer is nothing or next to nothing. Indeed, generically it is so…
The sextic plane curves that are invariant under the standard action of the icosahedral group on the projective plane make up a pencil of genus ten curves (spanned by a sum of six lines and a three times a conic). This pencil was first considered in a note by R.~M.~Winger in 1925 and is nowadays named after him. The second author recently gave this a modern treatment and proved among other things that it contains essentially every smooth genus ten curve with icosahedral symmetry. We here show that the Jacobian of such a curve contains the tensor product of an elliptic curve with a certain inte…
Let $k$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p$ and let $X$ the projective line over $k$ with three points removed. We investigate which finite groups $G$ can arise as the monodromy group of finite étale covers of $X$ that are tamely ramified over the three removed points. This provides new information about the tame fundamental group of the projective line. In particular, we show that for each prime $p\ge 5$, there are families of tamely ramified covers with monodromy the symmetric group $S_n$ or alternating group $A_n$ for infinitely many $n$. These covers come from the moduli…
In this paper, we study the algebraic form of the symmetric generalized Lamé equations which have finite projective monodromy groups. In particular, we consider equations with $3$ regular singular points on a flat torus $T$ which takes the form \begin{equation*} \begin{split} \frac{d^2 y}{dz^2}-\left[n_1(n_1+1)(\wp(z+a) +\wp(z-a))\right.\left. +A_1(ζ(z+a) - ζ(z-a))+n_0(n_0+1) \wp(z)+B\right]y=0, \end{split} \end{equation*} where $n_1, n_0 \in \Bbb R$, $A_1,B \in \Bbb C$, and $\wp$ is the Weierstrass elliptic function. We give a complete list of all the group types that occur as the finite proj…
Let $f:X\to C$ be a family of semistable K3 surfaces with non-empty set $S$ of singular fibres having infinite local monodromy. Then, when the so called Arakelov-Yau inequality reaches equality, we prove that $C\setminus S$ is a modular curve and the family comes essentially from a family of elliptic curves through a so called Nikulin-Kummer construction. In particular, when $C=\BBb P^1$, the family of elliptic curves must be one of Beauville's 6 examples where Arakelov inequality reaches equality.
By exploring the consequences of the triviality of the monodromy group for a class of surfaces of which the mixed Hodge structure is pure, we extend results of Miyanishi and Sugie, Dimca, Zaidenberg and Kaliman.
We present a number of examples to illustrate the use of small quotient dessins as substitutes for their often much larger and more complicated Galois (minimal regular) covers. In doing so we employ several useful group-theoretic techniques, such as the Frobenius character formula for counting triples in a finite group, pointing out some common traps and misconceptions associated with them. Although our examples are all chosen from Hurwitz curves and groups, they are relevant to dessins of any type.
Every graph has a canonical finite abelian group attached to it. This group has appeared in the literature under a variety of names including the sandpile group, critical group, Jacobian group, and Picard group. The construction of this group closely mirrors the construction of the Jacobian variety of an algebraic curve. Motivated by this analogy, it was recently suggested by Norman Biggs that the critical group of a finite graph is a good candidate for doing discrete logarithm based cryptography. In this paper, we study a bilinear pairing on this group and show how to compute it. Then we use …
A new approach to the analytic theory of difference equations with rational and elliptic coefficients is proposed. It is based on the construction of canonical meromorphic solutions which are analytical along "thick paths". The concept of such solutions leads to a notion of local monodromies of difference equations. It is shown that in the continuous limit they converge to the monodromy matrices of differential equations. New type of isomonodromic deformations of difference equations with elliptic coefficients changing the periods of elliptic curves is constructed.
We consider the isomonodromy problems for flat $G$-bundles over punctured elliptic curves $Σ_τ$ with regular singularities of connections at marked points. The bundles are classified by their characteristic classes. These classes are elements of the second cohomology group $H^2(Σ_τ,{\mathcal Z}(G))$, where ${\mathcal Z}(G)$ is the center of $G$. For any complex simple Lie group $G$ and arbitrary class we define the moduli space of flat bundles, and in this way construct the monodromy preserving equations in the Hamiltonian form and their Lax representations. In particular, they include the Pai…
We introduce gamma structures on regular hypergeometric D--modules in dimension 1 as special one--parametric systems of solutions on the compact subtorus. We note that a balanced gamma product is in the Paley--Wiener class and show that the monodromy with respect to the gamma structure is expressed algebraically in terms of the hypergeometric exponents. We compute the hypergeometric monodromy explicitly in terms of certain diagonal matrices, Vandermonde matrices and their inverses (or generalizations of those in the resonant case).
In the genus one case, we make explicit some constructions of Veech on flat surfaces and generalize some geometric results of Thurston about moduli spaces of flat spheres as well as some equivalent ones but of an analytico-cohomological nature of Deligne-Mostow, which concern the monodromy of Appell-Lauricella hypergeometric functions. In the twin paper arXiv:1604.01812, we follow Thurston's approach and study moduli spaces of flat tori with conical singularities and prescribed holonomy by means of geometrical methods relying on surgeries for flat surfaces. In the present paper, we study the s…
We generalize the construction of elliptic stable envelopes to actions of connected reductive groups and give a direct inductive proof of their existence and uniqueness in a rather general situation. We show these have powerful enumerative applications, in particular, to the computation of vertex functions and their monodromy.
