Relative enumerative invariants of real nodal del Pezzo surfaces (Q1783968)

The authors develop a version of Welschinger invariant for the so-called \textit{uninodal DP-pair}, i.e., real nodal del Pezzo surface \(X\) with a single ``node'' (irreducible rational \((-2)\)-curve) \(E\). The invariant counts, with Welschinger-type signs, all real rational curves in a prescribed homology class \(D\), tangent to \(E\) at each intersection point, and passing through a prescribed real collection \(\mathbf w\) of points such that the expected dimension of the moduli space is zero. (Clearly, all real points of \(\mathbf w\) must lie in the same component \(F^+\) of \(\mathbb{R} X\smallsetminus \mathbb{R} E\), which should be fixed in advance; an extra assumption is that, if \(\partial F^+\ne\varnothing\), then this boundary must be a single copy of \(\mathbb{R} E\). Another piece of data refining the count is an invariant class \(\phi\in H_2(X\smallsetminus F;\mathbb{Z}/2)\), where \(F\) is the component of \(\mathbb{R} X\) containing \(F^+\)). It is asserted that, if \(K_X^2\ge2\), the resulting count is an invariant of the deformation type (in the class of uninodal DP-pairs decorated as above) of \((X,E,\phi,D,F^+)\). If \(K_X^2=1\), the invariance holds under a number of additional technical assumptions (see Theorem 1.5, where several cases are listed); examples in \S\,6.2 illustrate that some extra assumptions are indeed necessary.