Chern slopes of simply connected complex surfaces of general type are dense in [2,3] (Q2352910)

For a smooth minimal complex surface of general type, the Chern numbers satisfy the so-called Bogomolov-Miyaoka-Yau inequality: \(c_1^2\leq 3c_2\). Moreover, the equality can hold if and only if the universal cover of the surface is a ball in \(\mathbb{C}^2\). In this paper, the authors prove that for any number \(r\in [2,3]\), there are spin (resp. nonspin and minimal) simply connected complex surfaces of general type with \(c_1^2/c_2\) arbitrarily close to \(r\). In particular, this shows the existence of simply connected surfaces of general type arbitrarily close to the Bogomolov-Miyaoka-Yau line. A central ingredient in their construction is a new family of special arrangements of elliptic curves in the projective plane.