Commuting involutions on surfaces of general type with \(p_g=0\) and \(K^2=7\) (Q2355977)

Among the complicated, widely investigated and still mysterious class of minimal surfaces of general type of genus zero, the surfaces with canonical degree \(7\) form the subclass less investigated, possibly the most difficult: we know indeed very few examples. A way to construct examples is by investigated the possible involutions on the surface, describing all possible (in principle) pairs (quotient surfaces, branch divisor) and then try to construct the pair, which is usually much simpler to construct than the original surface. Such analysis for minimal surfaces of general type of genus zero and canonical degree \(7\) has been done by \textit{Y. Lee} and \textit{Y. Shin} [Osaka J. Math. 51, No. 1, 121--141 (2014; Zbl 1288.14025)]. At that time only one example of minimal surface of general type of genus zero and canonical degree \(7\) was known, constructed by \textit{M. Inoue} [Tokyo J. Math. 17, No. 2, 295--319 (1994; Zbl 0836.14020)]. The Inoue surface has indeed two commuting involutions (so, counting also the composition, three involutions), so enter in the above analysis in more than one way. In the first part of this paper the author analyzes the smaller class of the minimal surfaces of general type of genus zero and canonical degree \(7\) having two commuting involutions. He find three possibilities for the invariants of the quotient surface and of the three branching divisors. One is the case of Inoue surfaces. A second case has been realized by the same author in the previous paper [Math. Z. 275, No. 3--4, 1275--1286 (2013; Zbl 1282.14067)]: indeed this analysis has been done by the author in his Ph.D. thesis and led to that construction. The existence of the third case has still to be settled, and the author plans to come back to this problem in the future. The second part to the paper is devoted to the study of the deformations of the just mentioned surfaces constructed by the same author in [loc. cit.]. The result is that the base of the Kuranishi family of all these surfaces is smooth and moreover that the subset of the Gieseker moduli space of the surfaces of general type given by the surfaces obtained in this way is an irreducible connected component normal unirational of dimension \(3\).