New families of Calabi-Yau threefolds without maximal unipotent monodromy (Q1942246)

In this paper, five new families of Calabi-Yau threefolds without maximal unipotent monodromy are constructed. For these families, the variation of their Hodge structures and their parametrizing spaces are described, and their Picard-Fuchs differential equations are explicitly determined. Since these families have no boundary points with maximal unipotent monodromy, the mirror families cannot be readily defined within the usual mirror symmetry framework. The construction of these new families of Calabi-Yau threefolds are done as follows: Start with \(K3\) surfaces and elliptic curves admitting non-symplectic automorphisms (of order \(4\)). Consider a product of such a \(K3\) surface \(S\) and such an elliptic curve \(E\). Next take the quotient of the product \(E\times S\) by the non-symplectic automorphism of order \(4\). Resolving singularities, one obtains a family of Calabi-Yau threefolds. The \(K3\) surfaces used in this construction are rather special. Indeed, a \(K3\) surface is realized as the quotient of the product of an elliptic curve \(E\) (admitting a non-symplectic automorphism \(\alpha_E\) of order \(4\)) with a curve \(C\) of genus \(g\in\{1,2,3\}\) admitting the automorphism \(\alpha_C\) with a specific property. Then the quotient of the product \(E\times C\) by the automorphism \(<\alpha_E, \alpha_C>\) admits a desingularization \(S\), which is a \(K3\) surface with non-symplectic automorphism \(\alpha_S\) of order \(4\). This yields five families of \(K3\) surfaces with non-symplectic automorphisms \(\alpha_S\) of order \(4\). Next consider the product \(E\times S\) of an elliptic curve \(E\) and a K3 surface \(S\), where \(S\) and \(E\) are one of the \(K3\) surfaces and elliptic curves, respectively, considered above. Then the desingularization of its quotient by the automorphism \(\alpha_E^3\times \alpha_S\) gives rise to five families of Calabi-Yau threefolds with Hodge numbers \((h^{1,1},h^{2,1}) \in\{(90,0), (73,1), (56,2), (61,1), (39,3)\}\). For these five families of Calabi-Yau threefolds, the parametrizing spaces are also determined. Also the Picard-Fuchs differential equations are computed, based on the fact that the variation of the Hodge structures depends only on the variation of the Hodge structures of the elliptic curve component. In particular, this results in the assertion that these families of Calabi-Yau threefolds admit no maximal unipotent monodromy.