Smooth deformations of singular contractions of class VII surfaces (Q2205610)

The authors study normal compact surfaces \(Y\) obtained from a minimal class VII surface \(X\) by contraction of a cycle \(C\) of \(r\) rational curves with \(C^2 < 0\). The main result states that, if the obtained cusp is smoothable, then \(Y\) is globally smoothable. The proof relies on a vanishing theorem for \(H^2(\Theta_Y )\). The condition ``the cusp is smoothable'' in the main theorem can be checked in terms of the intersection numbers of the cycle, by the Looijenga conjecture, which has recently been proved by \textit{M. Gross} et al. [Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 122, 65--168 (2015; Zbl 1351.14024)]. The authors also prove that this condition is always satisfied if \(r < b_2(X)\leq 11\). Therefore the singular surface \(Y\) aforementioned with \(r < b2(X)\leq 11\) is always smoothable by rational surfaces and this holds even for unknown class VII surfaces. Furthermore, the authors show that if \(r < b_2(X)\), any smooth small deformation of \(Y\) is rational, and if \(r = b_2(X)\) (i.e. when \(X\) is a half-Inoue surface), any smooth small deformation of \(Y\) is an Enriques surface.