A surface with \(q=2\) and canonical map of degree 16 (Q2396617)

The author continues here his quest for examples of surfaces of general type whose canonical map is of large degree [the author, Int. J. Math. 28, No. 6, Article ID 1750041, 10 p. (2017; Zbl 1388.14115)]. Here he considers the irregular case and constructs a minimal surface \(S\) of general type with irregularity \(q(S):=h^1(\mathcal O_S)=2\) and geometric genus \(p_g(S):=h^0(\omega_S)=3\) whose canonical map has degree \(d=16\). The classical bounds of Beauville give \(d=18\) when \(q=2\), so this example is very close to the known theoretical upper bound. In addition, there are very few examples with \(d>8\) in the literature, and they all satisfy \(q=0\). The example is constructed by first taking a \(\mathbb Z_2^3\)-cover of the projective plane, and then a further double cover.