\(K3\) mirror symmetry, Legendre family and Deligne's conjecture for the Fermat quartic (Q2231896)

The paper under review is an expository article on connections between mirror symmetry of smooth quartic \(K3\) surfaces and the geometry of Legendre family of elliptic curves. It was shown by \textit{H. Hartmann} [Manuscr. Math. 141, No. 3--4, 391--422 (2013; Zbl 1303.14044)] that smooth quartic \(K3\) surfaces and the Dwork family (the mirror family of the Fermat pencil of quartic surfaces) form a mirror pair. The paper constructs the mirror map explicitly studying the Picard-Fuchs equation, and shows that the mirror map is the period map of the Legendre family \({\mathcal{E}}_{\lambda} : y^2=x(x-1)(x-\lambda)\) of elliptic curves. This is done looking into the hypergeometric functions of these families. This observation suggests arithmetic relations of these two families, e.g., zeta functions, modularity of the Fermat quartic (weight 3 modular form), and that of a smooth fiber of the Legendre family at \(\lambda=2\) (weight 2 new form). Deligne's periods are computed for the Fermat quartic, and it is confirmed numerically that they coincide with special values of the theta function \(\theta_3\). These arithmetic properties are known among specialists in arithmetic geometry working this area. The novelity of this paper might be to bring in mirror symmetry point of view into arithmetic discussions, and may be useful to mathematical physicists interested in arithmetic of Calabi-Yau varieties.