On the failure of variational Torelli for regular elliptic surfaces with a section (Q1059120)

The techniques of infinitesimal variation of Hodge structure IVHS have been useful in proving generic Torelli theorems, as shown by recent work of Donagi, Green and Saito. The paper under review is concerned with minimal elliptic surfaces over \({\mathbb{P}}^ 1\) with a section, nonconstant j-invariant and \(p_ g\geq 2\). While generic Torelli has been proved for these surfaces by Chakiris, the main result of this paper is that variational Torelli fails, i.e., the surface is not determined up to isomorphism by the algebraic part of its IVHS. More precisely, the surface (with its section collapsed to a point) is a hypersurface \(w^ 2=z^ 3+P(x,y)z+Q(x,y)\) of degree 6n, \(n=p_ g+1\), in the weighted projective space \({\mathbb{P}}(1,1,2n,3n)\). Then the algebraic part of the IVHS is equivalent to knowledge of \(P_ xQ_ y-P_ yQ_ x\) up to a scalar. Thus the algebraic IVHS map generically has three-dimensional fibers on the coarse moduli space. The geometric interpretation of \(P_ xQ_ y-P_ yQ_ x\) is the following: generically it determines that part of the ramification locus of the j-invariant where \(j\neq 0\) or 1.