Hirzebruch-Kato surfaces, Deligne-Mostow's construction, and new examples of negatively curved compact Kähler surfaces (Q1818727)

The main goal of this paper is to prove the abundance of the set of compact complex surfaces which admit Kähler metrics with quasi-negative sectional curvature. The construction of Hirzebruch, Höfer, Kato and Deligne-Mostow on compact complex 2-ball quotients is used in order to construct further finite Galois coverings over them. Then, by an analytical result given by the author [Commun. Anal. Geom. 4, 129-160 (1996; Zbl 0863.53048)] and by \textit{G. D. Mostow} and \textit{Y.-T. Siu} [Ann. Math. 112, 321-360 (1980; Zbl 0453.53047)], these coverings admit Kähler metrics which are quasi-negatively curved, or negatively curved when the branching locus is smooth.