Finite groups of symplectic automorphisms of \(K3\) surfaces in positive characteristic (Q2389139)

Finite groups acting symplectically on a \(K3\) surface (i.e. groups leaving invariant its holomorphic 2-form) were classified in characteristic 0 by Nikulin, Mukai, Gang, Kondo. Mukai shows that they are all isomorphic to subgroups of the Mathieu group \(M_{23}\). The proof of Mukai does not extend in characteristic \(p\). In fact there are example of \(K3\) surfaces in positive characteristic whose automorphism group contains a finite symplectic subgroup which is not realized as a subgroup of \(M_{23}\) (e.g. the Fermat quartic over a field of characteristic 3). In the paper under review Dolgachev and Keum extend the classification to the characteristic \(p\). More precisely they show that Mukai classification extends to positive characteristic under the assumption that (i) the order of the group is coprime to \(p\) and (ii) either the surface or its quotient is not birationally isomorphic to a supersingular \(K3\) surface with Artin invariant \(1\). In the case without assumption (ii) they classify all possible new groups which may appear and they show that assumption (i) is always satisfied if \(p>11\). For \(p=2,3,5,11\) they give examples of \(K3\) surfaces with finite symplectic automorphism groups of order divisible by \(p\) which are not contained in Mukai's list.