Three dimensional divisorial extremal neighborhoods (Q2571043)

Let \(f:Y\rightarrow X\) be a birational proper morphism between threefolds with only terminal singularities. Assume that \(C:=f^{-1}(x_0)\) is an irreducible curve and that \(-K_Y\) is \(\mathbb Q\)-Cartier and \(f\)-ample. Then \(C\subset Y\rightarrow^f X\ni x_0\) is called a threedimensional extremal neighborhood. If \(f\) is a divisorial contraction, i.e., the exceptional set \(E\) of \(f\) is an irreducible divisor, then the extremal neighborhood is called divisorial. In this paper it is assumed that \(\Gamma =f(E)\) is a smooth curve. Those divisorial extremal neighborhoods can be thought of as deformations of specific surface singularities and the author uses methods from deformation theory to establish the main result: The pairs \((S,Z)\) of surfaces \(S\) and \(Z\) for which there is a threedimensional divisorial extremal neighborhood \(C\subset Y\rightarrow^f X\ni x_0\) such that \(Z\) is the general member of \(| {\mathcal O}_Y| \) and \(S\) the general member of \(| -K_Y| \) are determined up to an analytic isomorphism by a set of integer invariants which appear as solutions of a system of Diophantine equations. The worst singularities of \(S\) are Du Val and of \(Z\) semi-log-canonical. The classification of these extremal divisorial neighborhoods can be reduced to the description of the versal deformation spaces of such surfaces. The result is applied to classify the cases where \(x_0\) is a terminal singularity of \(X\) of type \(cA_1\) or \(cA_2\).