A family of threefolds of general type with canonical map of high degree (Q2663360)

The authors deal with the degrees of canonical maps of smooth varieties of general type. For curves it is classically known that the canonical map is either an embedding or a degree 2 map onto \(\mathbb P^1\), the latter happens precisely when the curve is hyperelliptic. For surfaces \textit{A. Beauville} [Invent. Math. 55, 121--140 (1979; Zbl 0403.14006)] showed that the degree of the canonical map is at most 36, and recently \textit{C. Rito} [``Surfaces with canonical map of maximum degree'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1903.03017}] showed that this bound is sharp. In dimension three \textit{R. Du} and \textit{Y. Gao} [Geom. Dedicata 185, 123--130 (2016; Zbl 1391.14077)] showed that the degree of the canonical map is at most 360, but the highest value reached so far is 72, achieved by taking the product of a hyperelliptic curve and Rito's surface. In the paper under review, the authors set a new record constructing a two-dimensional family of smooth minimal threefolds of general type with canonical map of degree 96. The family is obtained by considering certain curves of genus five endowed with \((\mathbb Z_2)^4 \)-actions and by taking the quotient of the product of such three curves by a free \((\mathbb Z_2)^4 \)-action induced by the actions on the single curves.