Cox rings of \(K3\) surfaces of Picard number three (Q2204856)

The Cox ring of a normal projective variety \(X\) defined over the complex numbers with finitely generated and free divisor class group \(\mathrm{Cl}(X)\) is graded algebra \[ R(X) := \bigoplus_{[D]\in\mathrm{Cl}(X)}H^{0}(X,\mathcal{O}_{X}(D)). \] We say that a variety \(X\) is called the Mori dream space if its Cox ring is finitely generated. There are two fundamental problems in the theory of Cox rings, namely to determine conditions on \(X\) such that the Cox ring \(R(X)\) is finitely generated, and to find an explicit presentation for \(R(X)\). In the paper under review the authors focus on determining Cox rings for certain \(K3\) surfaces. The main result of the paper can be summed up as follows. Main Result. Let \(X\) be a smooth complex projective \(K3\) surface. Then the degrees of a minimal set of generators of its Cox ring \(R(X)\) are either: \begin{itemize} \item[i)] classes of \((-2)\)-curves; \item[ii)] classes of nef divisors which are sums of at most three elements of the Hilbert basis of the nef cone (allowing repetitions); \item[iii)] or classes of divisors of the form \(2(F+F')\), where \(F,F'\) are smooth elliptic curves with \(F\cdot F'=2\). \end{itemize} Then the authors apply the above general result to the case of Mori dream \(K3\) surfaces of Picard number, namely they determine the degrees of a generating set for the Cox rings of general elements of the \(26\) families of such surfaces. The above result is based on computations which are performed with the use of MAGMA.