Arbitrarily large Galois orbits of non-homeomorphic surfaces (Q1746631)

This paper shows two results involving complex surfaces isogenous to higher products with non-homeomorphic Galois conjugates. The first result deals with Beauville surfaces, i.e. those of the form \((C_1\times C_2)/G\), where each \(C_i\) is a curve of genus \(g_i>1\) such that \(C_i/G\cong\mathbb{P}^1(\mathbb{C})\) and the projection \(C_i\to C_i/G\) is branched over three points (i.e. \(C_i\) is a quasiplatonic curve). As in [\textit{G. González-Diez} and \textit{D. Torres-Teigell}, Adv. Math. 229, No. 6, 3096--3122 (2012; Zbl 1263.14038)], the key idea relies on Catanese's rigidity theorem of Beauville surfaces: Two such surfaces are isomorphic if they are products of two curves, where each of them are isomorphic or differ by complex conjugation, divided by isomorphic groups. In contrast to [loc.cit.], they consider the group action of \(G:=\mathrm{PGL}_2(p)\) instead of \(\mathrm{PSL}_2(p)\) on curves. After the summaries on Beauville surfaces and properties of \(\mathrm{PGL}_2(p)\) in Sections 2-3, the construction goes as follows: Let \(k,l>10\) be divisors of \(p-1\) and \(p+1\) respectively such that \((p-1)/k\) and \((p+1)/l\) are odd. There are \(\mathrm{Gal}(\overline{\mathbb Q}/\mathbb{Q})\)-orbits of non-isomorphic real curves of length \(\varphi(k)/2\) resp. \(\varphi(l)/2\) with \(G\)-actions defined over the triangle groups \(\Delta(2,3,k)\) resp. \(\Delta(2,4,l)\) as constructed in Sections 4-5. These give rise to a Galois orbit of \(\varphi(k)\varphi(l)/4\) Beauville surfaces that are non-mutually isomorphic as discussed in Sections 6-7. The second result deals with \(n\)-dimensional families of complex surfaces isogenous to higher products. The key idea is Proposition 8.1, which is a slight modification of Catanese's rigidity theorem when one factor is a quasiplatonic curve. The second factor then arises from a cocompact Fuchsian group having \(G\) as quotient. Fixing such a curve \(C_2\) of genus \(g_2\), we obtain a family of curves of genus \(g_2\) with \(G\)-actions topologically conjugate to the one on \(C_2\). Example 8.3 shows that we can obtain such families with any given fixed dimension. Furthermore, we can choose the first factor such that \(\mathrm{Gal}(\mathbb{C}/\mathbb{Q})\)-orbit of the resulting surface has at least \(N\) non-isomorphic fundamental groups for any given \(N\). This paper ends with the discussion in the last section that, although the fundamental groups of those surfaces in a Galois orbit are non-isomorphic, they have the same profinite completions. This can be seen, for instance, by the theory of étale fundamental group.