Inspired by a construction by Arnaud Beauville of a surface of general type with $K^2 = 8, p_g =0$, the second author defined the Beauville surfaces as the surfaces which are rigid, i.e., they have no nontrivial deformation, and admit un unramified covering which is isomorphic to a product of curves of genus at least 2.
In this case the moduli space of surfaces homeomorphic to the given surface consists either of a unique real point, or of a pair of complex conjugate points corresponding to complex conjugate surfaces. It may also happen that a Beauville surface is biholomorphic to its complex conjugate surface, neverless it fails to admit a real structure.
First aim of this note is to provide series of concrete examples of the second situation, respectively of the third. Second aim is to introduce a wider audience, especially group theorists, to the problem of classification of such surfaces, especially with regard to the problem of existence of real structures on them.
A Beauville surface is a rigid surface of general type arising as a quotient of a product of curves $C_{1}$, $C_{2}$ of genera $g_{1},g_{2}\ge 2$ by the free action of a finite group $G$. In this paper we study those Beauville surfaces for which $G$ is abelian (so that $G\cong \mathbb{Z}_{n}^{2}$ with $\gcd(n,6)=1$ by a result of Catanese). For each such $n$ we are able to describe all such surfaces, give a formula for the number of their isomorphism classes and identify their possible automorphism groups. This explicit description also allows us to observe that such surfaces are all defined o…
Extending results of Bauer, Catanese and Grunewald, and of Fuertes and González-Diez, we show that Beauville surfaces of unmixed type can be obtained from the groups L_2(q) and SL_2(q) for all prime powers q>5, and the Suzuki groups Sz(2^e) and the Ree groups R(3^e) for all odd e>1. We also show that L_2(q) and SL_2(q) admit strongly real Beauville structures, yielding real Beauville surfaces, if and only if q>5.
We develop theorems which produce a multitude of hyperbolic triples for the finite classical groups. We apply these theorems to prove that every quasisimple group except Alt(5) and SL_2(5) is a Beauville group. In particular, we settle a conjecture of Bauer, Catanese and Grunewald which asserts that all non-abelian finite simple groups except for the alternating group $\Alt(5)$ are Beauville groups.
Beauville surfaces are a class of complex surfaces defined by letting a finite group $G$ act on a product of Riemann surfaces. These surfaces possess many attractive geometric properties several of which are dictated by properties of the group $G$. In this survey we discuss the groups that may be used in this way. \emph{En route} we discuss several open problems, questions and conjectures.
In this paper we construct new Beauville surfaces with group either $\PSL(2,p^e)$, or belonging to some other families of finite simple groups of Lie type of low Lie rank, or an alternating group, or a symmetric group, proving a conjecture of Bauer, Catanese and Grunewald. The proofs rely on probabilistic group theoretical results of Liebeck and Shalev, on classical results of Macbeath and on recent results of Marion.
In this paper we give the asymptotic growth of the number of connected components of the moduli space of surfaces of general type corresponding to certain families of Beauville surfaces with group either $\PSL(2,p)$, or an alternating group, or a symmetric group or an abelian group. We moreover extend these results to regular surfaces isogenous to a higher product of curves.
A Beauville group acts freely on the product of two compact Riemann surfaces and faithfully on each one of them. In this paper, we consider higher products and present {\it{generalised Beauville groups}}: for $d \geq 2$, $d$ is the minimal value for which the same action can be defined on the product of $d$ compact Riemann surfaces.
We discuss Beauville groups whose corresponding Beauville surfaces are either always strongly real or never strongly real producing several infinite families of examples.
A Beauville surface is a rigid complex surface of the form (C1 x C2)/G, where C1 and C2 are non-singular, projective, higher genus curves, and G is a finite group acting freely on the product. Bauer, Catanese, and Grunewald conjectured that every finite simple group G, with the exception of A5, gives rise to such a surface. We prove that this is so for almost all finite simple groups (i.e., with at most finitely many exceptions). The proof makes use of the structure theory of finite simple groups, probability theory, and character estimates.
A Beauville surface is a rigid complex surface of general type, isogenous to a higher product by the free action of a finite group, called a Beauville group. Here we consider which characteristically simple groups can be Beauville groups. We show that if G is a cartesian power of a simple group L_2(q), L_3(q), U_3(q), Sz(2^e), R(3^e), or of a sporadic simple group, then G is a Beauville group if and only if it has two generators and is not isomorphic to A_5.
We construct an infinite family of triples $(G_k,H_k,T_k)$, where $G_k$ are 2-groups of increasing order, $H_k$ are index-2 subgroups of $G_k$, and $T_k$ are pairs of generators of $H_k$. We show that the triples $u_k = (G_k,H_k,T_k)$ are mixed Beauville structures if $k$ is not a power of 2. This is the first known infinite family of 2-groups admitting mixed Beauville structures. Moreover, the associated Beauville surface $S(u_3)$ is real and, for $k > 3$ not a power of 2, the Beauville surface $S(u_k)$ is not biholomorphic to $\bar{S(u_k)}$.
A Beauville surface (of unmixed type) is a complex algebraic surface which is the quotient of the product of two curves of genus at least 2 by a finite group G acting freely on the product, where G preserves the two curves and their quotients by G are isomorphic to the projective line, ramified over three points. Such a group G is called a Beauville group. We show that if a characteristically simple group G is a cartesian power of a finite simple alternating group, then G is a Beauville group if and only if it has two generators and is not isomorphic to A_5.
We start discussing the group of automorphisms of the field of complex numbers, and describe, in the special case of polynomials with only two critical values, Grothendieck's program of 'Dessins d' enfants', aiming at giving representations of the absolute Galois group. We describe Chebycheff and Belyi polynomials, and other explicit examples. As an illustration, we briefly treat difference and Schur polynomials. Then we concentrate on a higher dimensional analogue of the triangle curves, namely, Beauville surfaces and varieties isogenous to a product. We describe their moduli spaces, and show…
A strongly real Beauville group is a Beauville group that defines a real Beauville surface. Here we discuss efforts to find examples of these groups, emphasising on the one extreme finite simple groups and on the other abelian and nilpotent groups. We will also discuss the case of characteristically simple groups and almost simple groups. \emph{En route} we shall discuss several questions, open problems and conjectures as well as giving several new examples of infinite families of strongly real Beauville groups.
We characterize Beauville surfaces of unmixed type with group either PSL(2,p^e) or PGL(2,p^e), thus extending previous results of Bauer, Catanese and Grunewald, Fuertes and Jones, and Penegini and the author.
A Beauville surface is a complex algebraic surface that can be presented as a quotient of a product of two curves by a suitable action of a finite group. Bauer, Catanese and Grunewald have been able to intrinsically characterize the groups appearing in minimal presentations of Beauville surfaces in terms of the existence of a so-called "Beauville structure". They conjectured that all finite simple groups, except A5, admit such a structure. This conjecture has recently been proved by Guralnick-Malle and Fairbairn-Magaard-Parker. In this survey we demonstrate another approach towards the proof o…
We construct orbits of the absolute Galois group, of explicit unbounded size, consisting of surfaces with mutually non-isomorphic fundamental groups. These are Beauville surfaces with Beauville group PGL_2(p).
We give a survey on the fundamental group of surfaces isogenous to a higher product. If the surfaces are regular, e.g. if they are Beauville surfaces, the first homology group is a finite group. We present a MAGMA script which calculates the first homology groups of regular surfaces isogenous to a product.
Via wall-crossing, we study the birational geometry of Beauville-Mukai systems on K3 surfaces with Picard rank one. We show that there is a class of walls which are always present in the movable cones of Beauville-Mukai systems. We give a complete description of the birational geometry of rank two Beauville-Mukai systems when the genus of the surface is small.
Under some hypotheses on the singular type of the one-parameter family of elliptic curves in a primitively polarized $K3$ surface $S$ determined by its polarization (which is expected to be true for a very general polarized $K3$ surface), we give a more geometric proof of the fact that the second Chern class of $S$ is equal to $24 \cdot o_S$ in the Chow group of $0$-cycles where $o_S$ is the Beauville-Voisin canonical $0$-cycle.
We study wall-crossing for the Beauville-Mukai system of rank three on a general genus two K3 surface. We show that such a system is related to the Hilbert scheme of ten points on the surface by a sequence of flops, whose exceptional loci can be described as Brill-Noether loci. We also obtain Brill-Noether type results for sheaves in the Beauville-Mukai system.
We construct quasi-phantom admissible subcategories in the derived category of coherent sheaves on the Beauville surface $S$. These quasi-phantoms subcategories appear as right orthogonals to subcategories generated by exceptional collections of maximal possible length 4 on $S$. We prove that there are exactly 6 exceptional collections consisting of line bundles (up to a twist) and these collections are spires of two helices.
Suppose that a Hilbert scheme of points on a K3 surface S of Picard rank one admits a rational Lagrangian fibration. We show that if the degree of the surface is sufficiently large compared to the number of points, then the Hilbert scheme is the unique hyperkähler manifold in its birational class. In particular, the Hilbert scheme is a Lagrangian fibration itself, which we realize as coming from a (twisted) Beauville-Mukai system on a Fourier-Mukai partner of S. We also show that when the degree of the surface is small our method can be used to find all birational models of the Hilbert scheme.
The Beauville-Voisin conjecture predicts the existence of a filtration on projective hyper-Kähler manifolds opposite to the conjecture Bloch-Beilinson filtration, called the Beauivlle-Voisin filtration. Voisin has introduced a filtration on zero cycles of an arbitrary projective hyper-Kähler manifold. On moduli space of stable objects of a projective K3 surface, there are other candidates constructed by Shen-Yin-Zhao, Barros-Flapan-Marian-Silversmith and more recently by Vial from different point of views. According to the work of Vial, all of them are proved to be equivalent except Voisin's f…
The Beauville-Bogomolov lattice is computed for a simplest singular symplectic manifold of dimension 4, obtained as a partial desingularization of the quotient $S^{[2]}/ι$, where $S^{[2]}$ is the Hilbert square of a K3 surface $S$ and $ι$ is a symplectic involution on it. This result applies, in particular, to the singular symplectic manifolds of dimension 4, constructed by Markushevich-Tikhomirov as compactifications of families of Prym varieties of a linear system of curves on a K3 surface with an anti-symplectic involution.
If $\mathcal S$ is a Beauville surface $({\mathcal C}_1\times{\mathcal C}_2)/G$, then the Hurwitz bound implies that $|G|\le 1764\,χ({\mathcal S})$, with equality if and only if the Beauville group $G$ acts as a Hurwitz group on both curves ${\mathcal C}_i$. Equivalently, $G$ has two generating triples of type $(2,3,7)$, such that no generator in one triple is conjugate to a power of a generator in the other. We show that this property is satisfied by alternating groups $A_n$, their double covers $2.A_n$, and special linear groups $SL_n(q)$ if $n$ is sufficiently large, but by no sporadic simp…
We give a simplified proof (in characteristic zero) of the decomposition theorem for complex projective varieties with klt singularities and numerically trivial canonical bundle. The proof rests in an essential way on most of the partial results of the previous proof obtained by many authors, but avoids those in positive characteristic by S. Druel. The single to some extent new contribution is an algebraicity and bimeromorphic splitting result for generically locally trivial fibrations with fibres without holomorphic vector fields. We give first the proof in the easier smooth case, following t…
We give a new proof of the theorem of Beauville and Voisin about the decomposition of the small diagonal of a K3 surface S. Our proof is explicit and works with the embedding of S in a projective space. It is different from the one used by Beauville and Voisin, which employed the existence of one-parameters families of elliptic curves.
We obtain an alternate proof of an injectivity result by Beauville for a map from the moduli space of quartic del Pezzo surfaces to the set of conjugacy classes of certain subgroups of the Cremona group. This amounts to showing that a projective configuration of five distinct unordered points on the line can be reconstructed from its five projective four-point subconfigurations. This is done by reduction to a question in the classical invariant theory of the binary quintic, which is solved by computer-assisted methods. More precisely, we show that six specific invariants of degree 24, the cons…
We show that for a K3 surface X the finitely generated subring R(X) of the Chow ring introduced by Beauville and Voisin is preserved under derived equivalences. This is proved by analyzing Chern characters of spherical bundles. As for a K3 surface X defined over a number field all spherical bundles on the associated complex K3 surface are defined over $\bar\QQ$, this is compatible with the Bloch-Beilinson conjecture. Besides the work of Beauville and Voisin, Lazarfeld's result on Brill-Noether theory for curves in K3 surfaces and the deformation theory developed with Macri and Stellari in arXi…
We prove that the weight-two Hodge structure of moduli spaces of torsion-free sheaves on a K3 surface is as described by Mukai (the rank is arbitrary but we assume the first Chern class is primitive). We prove the moduli space is an irreducible symplectic variety (by Mukai's work it was known to be symplectic). By work of Beauville, this implies that its $H^2$ has a canonical integral non-degenrate quadratic form; Mukai's recepee for $H^2$ includes a description of Beauville's quadratic form. As an application we compute higher-rank Donaldson polynomials of $K3$ surfaces.
Let X be a smooth complex surface of general type such that the image of the canonical map $ϕ$ of X is a surface $Σ$ and that $ϕ$ has degree $δ\geq 2$. Let $ε\colon S\to Σ$ be a desingularization of $Σ$ and assume that the geometric genus of S is not zero. Beauville has proved that in this case S is of general type and $ε$ is the canonical map of S. Beauville has also constructed the only infinite series of examples $ϕ:X\to Σ$ with the above properties that was known up to now. Starting from his construction, we define a {\em good generating pair}, namely a pair $(h:V\to W, L)$ where h is a fi…
The decomposition theorem for smooth projective morphisms $π:\mathcal{X}\rightarrow B$ says that $Rπ_*\mathbb{Q}$ decomposes as $\oplus R^iπ_*\mathbb{Q}[-i]$. We describe simple examples where it is not possible to have such a decomposition compatible with cup-product, even after restriction to Zariski dense open sets of $B$. We prove however that this is always possible for families of $K3$ surfaces (after shrinking the base), and show how this result relates to a result by Beauville and the author on the Chow ring of $K3$ surfaces $S$. We give two proofs of this result, the second one involv…
Chapters : Old and new inequalities; Surfaces with $χ=1$ and the bicanonical map; Surfaces with $p_g=4$; Surfaces isogeneous to a product, Beauville surfaces and the absolute Galois group;Lefschetz pencils and braid monodromies;DEF, DIFF and other equivalence relations.
We get a new inequality on the Hodge number $h^{1,1}(S)$ of fibred algebraic complex surfaces $S$, which is a generalization of an inequality of Beauville. Our inequality implies the Arakelov type inequalities due to Arakelov, Faltings, Viehweg and Zuo, respectively.
Let X be a projective complex K3 surface. Beauville and Voisin singled out a 0-cycle c_X on X of degree 1: it is represented by any point lying on a rational curve in X. Huybrechts proved that the second Chern class of a rigid simple vector-bundle on X is a multiple of the Beauville-Voisin class c_X if certain hypotheses hold and he conjectured that the additional hypotheses are unnecessary. We believe that the following generalization of Huybrechts' conjecture holds. Let M and N be moduli spaces of stable pure sheaves on X (with fixed cohomological Chern characters) and suppose that they have…
A generic K3 surface of degree 2t is a general complex projective K3 surface whose Picard group is generated by the class of an ample divisor whose with respect to the intersection form is 2t. We show that if X is the Hilbert square of a generic K3 surface of degree 2t, with $t > 2$, such that X admits an ample divisor with $q_X(D)=2$, where $q_X$ Beauville-Bogomolov-Fujiki form, then X is a double EPW sextic.
Let F be a polarized irreducible holomorphic symplectic fourfold, deformation equivalent to the Hilbert scheme parametrizing length-two zero-dimensional subschemes of a K3 surface. The homology group H^2(F,Z) is equipped with an integral symmetric nondegenerate form, the Beauville form. We give precise conjectures for the structure of the cone of effective curves - and by duality - the cone of ample divisors. Formally they are completely analogous to the results known for K3 surfaces, and they are expressed entirely in terms of the integers represented by the Beauville form restricted to Pic(F…
We apply the Yau-Zaslow-Beauville method to compute the Euler characteristic of the generalized Kummer varieties attached to a complex abelian surface (a calculation also done by Goettsche and Soergel by different methods). It is related to the number of genus 2 curves on an abelian surface.
This paper proposes a new geometric construction of Enriques surfaces. Its starting point are K3 surfaces with jacobian elliptic fibration which arise from rational elliptic surfaces by a quadratic base change. The Enriques surfaces obtained in this way are characterised by elliptic fibrations with a rational curve as bisection which splits into two sections on the covering K3 surface. The construction has applications to the study of Enriques surfaces with specific automorphisms. It also allows us to answer a question of Beauville about Enriques surfaces whose Brauer groups show an exceptiona…
Inspired by Beauville's recent construction of Ulrich sheaves on abelian surfaces, we pose the question of whether a torsion-free sheaf on a polarized smooth projective variety with Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity 1 is a GV (generic vanishing) sheaf, and present evidence that this question is governed by the positivity of cycles on generalized Brill-Noether loci. We prove that it has an affirmative answer for natural polarizations on many well-known irregular surfaces, as well as some polarizations on ruled threefolds over a curve.
A rational Lagrangian fibration f on an irreducible symplecitc variety V is a rational map which is birationally equivalent to a regular surjective morphism with Lagrangian fibers. By analogy with K3 surfaces, it is natural to expect that a rational Lagrangian fibration exists if and only if V has a divisor D with Bogomolov--Beauville square 0. This conjecture is proved in the case when V is the punctual Hilbert scheme of a generic algebraic K3 surface S. The construction of f uses a twisted Fourier--Mukai transform which induces a birational isomorphism of V with a certain moduli space of twi…
Motivated by a question by D. Mumford : can a computer classify all surfaces with $p_g = 0$ ? we try to show the complexity of the problem. We restrict it to the classification of the minimal surfaces of general type with $p_g = 0, K^2 = 8$ which are constructed by the Beauville construction, namely, which are quotients of a product of curves by the free action of a finite group G acting separately on each component. We think that man and computer will soon solve this classification problem. In the paper we classify completely the 5 cases where the group G is abelian. For these surfaces, we de…
We construct projectors in the ring of correspondences of a complex uniruled 3-fold $X$ which lift the Kuenneth components of the diagonal in singular cohomology and have other properties which were conjectured by J. Murre. Such Murre decompositions have been already obtained for curves, surfaces, abelian varieties and varieties with cell decompositions by the work of Manin, Shermenev, Beauville, Murre et.al.. In particular they define a natural filtration on the Chow groups of $X$ which was conjectured by Bloch and Beilinson. To do this we use Mori theory and construct projectors in the situa…
It was shown by A. Beauville that if the canonical map $φ_{|K_M|}$ of a complex smooth projective surface $M$ is generically finite, then ${\rm deg}(φ_{|K_M|})\leq 36$. The first example of a surface with canonical degree 36 was found by the second author. In this article, we show that for any surface which is a degree four Galois étale cover of a fake projective plane $X$ with the largest possible automorphism group ${\rm Aut}(X)=C_7:C_3$ (the unique non-abelian group of order 21), the base locus of the canonical map is finite, and we verify that 35 of these surfaces have maximal canonical de…
In this paper, we present an algorithm for reparametrizing birational surface parametrizations into birational polynomial surface parametrizations without base points, if they exist. For this purpose, we impose a transversality condition to the base points of the input parametrization.
We classify finite groups acting by birational transformations of a non-trivial Severi--Brauer surface over a field of characteristc zero that are not conjugate to subgroups of the automorphism group. Also, we show that the automorphism group of a smooth cubic surface over a field $K$ of characteristic zero that has no $K$-points is abelian, and find a sharp bound for the Jordan constants of birational automorphism groups of such cubic surfaces.
We construct several examples of genus-one fibered K3 surfaces without a global section with type $I_{n}$ fibers, by considering double covers of a special class of rational elliptic surfaces lacking a global section, known as Halphen surfaces of index 2. The resulting K3 surfaces have bisection geometries. F-theory compactifications on these K3 genus-one fibrations without a section times a K3 yield models that have $SU(n)$ gauge symmetries with a discrete $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry.
Starting with the Dolgachev surface E(1)_{2,3} we construct an infinite family of distinct exotic copies of the rational surface E(1), each of which admits a handlebody decomposition without 1- and 3- handles, and we draw these handlebodies.
