Enriques surfaces: Brauer groups and Kummer structures (Q1940061)

This paper is concerned with Brauer groups of Enriques surfaces. Let \(Y\) be a complex Enriques surface and let \(X\) be the \(K3\) surface given by the universal cover \(\pi:X\to Y\). Let \({\mathrm{Br}}(Y)\) be the Brauer group of \(Y\). \textit{A. Beauville} [Math. Res. Lett. 16, No. 5--6, 927--934 (2009; Zbl 1195.14053)] has asked the following questions: (i) Give explicit examples of Enriques surfaces such that \(\pi^*({\mathrm{Br}}(Y))=\{0\}\); (ii) Are there such surfaces defined over \({\mathbb{Q}}\)?; (iii) If so, exhibit some. The main results of this article are to give answers to Beauville's questions, and are formulated in the following theorems. Theorem 1. Let \(N>1\). Consider a general \(K3\) surface \(X_N\) with the Picard number \(\rho(X_N)=19\). Denote the quotient of \(X_N\) by the Enriques involution \(\tau\) by \(Z_N\). Then \(\pi^*{\mathrm{Br}}(Z_N)=\{0\}\) (resp. \({\mathbb{Z}}/2{\mathbb{Z}}\)) if \(N\) is odd (resp. even). Theorem 2. Let \(N\in{\mathbb{N}}\). Consider a Kummer surface \(Y_N\) with the Picard number \(\rho(Y_N)=19\). Let \(\tau\) denote the Enriques involution on \(Y_N\). Then \(\pi^*{\mathrm{Br}}(Y_N/\tau)=\{0\}\) (resp. \({\mathbb{Z}}/2{\mathbb{Z}}\)) if \(N\) is odd (resp. even). Theorem 1 covers the non-Kummer case, and Theorem 2 the Kummer case. These two theorems show that the Enriques surfaces in question do arise in families. The families of Enriques surfaces in both theorems are constructed as specializations of the Barth-Peters \(2\)-dimensional family \({\mathcal{X}}\) of \(K3\) surfaces [\textit{W. Barth} and \textit{C. Peters}, Invent. Math. 73, 383--411 (1983; Zbl 0518.14023)]. The main idea is, for any integer \(N>1\), to construct a \(1\)-dimensional family \({\mathcal{X}}_N\) of the Barth-Peters family \({\mathcal{X}}\) of \(K3\) surfaces, which is generally non-Kummer type for Theorem 1, and respectively, a family \({\mathcal{Y}}_N\) of Kummer type for Theorem 2, and \(X_N\) (resp. \(Y_N)\) is the generic member of the family. The constructions use elliptic fibrations, and Shioda-Inose structures. For the question (ii) and (iii), an explicit family is constructed with \(N=3\) and shown to be defined over \({\mathbb{Q}}\).