Reflexive polygons and rational elliptic surfaces (Q6170893)

Toric geometry sits at the heart of mirror symmetry. The present paper works out an instructive instance of this starting from reflexive polygons, i.e.\ lattice polygons with a unique interior lattice point, taken to be the origin. Up to the action of GL\(_2(\mathbb Z)\), there are 16 reflexive polygons. For each of them, say \(P\), the authors construct two algebraic surfaces with Gorenstein singularities at worst: \begin{itemize} \item \(X_P\), associated to the face fan of \(P\), and \item \(Y_P\), associated to the normal fan of \(P\). \end{itemize} The authors compute the (relatively minimal) Jacobian rational elliptic surface \(Y\to\mathbb P^1\) which arises by a suitable blow-up from each given \(Y_P\). Interestingly, these surfaces turn out to be rather special; namely, with 3 exceptions, they are extremal elliptic surfaces, i.e.\ they have finite Mordell-Weil group of sections. In particular, they are isolated in moduli, as shown by \textit{R. Miranda} and \textit{U. Persson} [Math. Z. 193, 537--558 (1986; Zbl 0652.14003)]. The remaining 3 surfaces have Mordell-Weil rank one, so they a priori deform in a one-dimensional family, but in private communication, the authors pointed out that the special members are singled out by the property that they have trivial Looijenga pair period point (which can also be phrased in terms of mixed Hodge structures, cf. [\textit{P. Hacking} and \textit{A. Keating}, Geom. Topol. 26, No. 8, 3747--3833 (2022; Zbl 1518.14057)]). In any case, it is proved that \(Y\) is mirror to a general smoothing of \(X_P\) (which is a smooth del Pezzo surface with very ample anticanonical class).